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The parish priest 





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Digitized by the Internet Archive — 
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THE PARISH PRIEST™ set 
BY 
J. G. H’ BARRY, D.D., LITT.D. 


SELDEN PEABODY DELANY, D.D. 





NEW YORK 
EDWIN S. GORHAM, Publisher 


COPYRIGHT 
EDWIN S. GORHAM 


PERSONAL LIFE 
I. The Inner Life of the Priest ...... 
10 B: The Intellectual Life of the Priest ... 
TLE The Social Life of the Priest ...... 


TABLE OF CONTENTS 


PREACHING AND TEACHING 


The Preparation of the Preacher ... 
[EVES OU MOL MODS, i sicsiia ile elena 
The Technique of the Sermon .... 
sermons, to Children ......0..... 
Classes and Instructions ........ 
Preparation for Confirmation .... 
Quiet Days and Retreats ........ 


PASTORAL WORK 


XI. 
XII. 
XITT. 


The Priest as) Pastor's... .0.0 6% pis 
Sinners and Confession .......... 
The Perfecting of the Saints ..... 
ThelPrisstiag sDirector Won siccuae 


The Mentally Sick rose Iie ea 
Parish Administration .......... 
The Discipline of the Laity ...... 
Advertising and Propaganda ..... 


SACERDOTAL FUNCTIONS 


ox 
POX TL. 
XXIII. 
XXIV. 


The Blessed Sacrament ......... 
Eixtra-Liturgical Devotions ....... 
Worship and Ceremonial ......... 
The Sacrament of Marriage ....... 













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CHAPTER I 
Tuer Inner Lirt or THE PRIEST 


THE young man not long from the Seminary and just 
ordained to the priesthood finds himself in charge 
of a parish and tries to understand what that means 
and what are the demands that are going to be made 
upon him. Of necessity he feels a sense of the awful re- 
sponsibility that is his, and asks himself with a keener 
appreciation of the situation than has been possible be- 
fore, what is his fitness to meet it, and how far his 
training has qualified him for his work. The words of 
the bishop’s exhortation are still fresh in his ears, im- 
pressing upon him at once the dignity and the responsi- 
bility of his vocation. ‘‘And now again we exhort you, 
in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye have in 
remembrance, into how high ‘a Dignity, and to how 
weighty an Office and Charge ye are called: that is to 
say, to be Messengers, Watchmen, and Stewards of the 
Lord; to teach, and to premonish, to feed and provide 
for the Lord’s family; to seek for Christ’s sheep that 
are dispersed abroad, and for his children who are in 
the midst of this naughty world, that they may be saved 
through Christ for ever.’’ : 

That is what the priest is called to. He has had that 
before him for years as the objective of his life. And 
as he stood before the bishop and heard his question, 
‘‘Do you think in your heart, that you are truly called, 
according to the will of our Lord Jesus Christ. . . .to 
the Order and Ministry of Priesthood?’’ he readily an- 
swered, ‘‘I think it.’’ Now he is, so at least we picture 
him, in the empty church—his church—where he has 


8 The Parish Priest 


been given authority to minister, and is reading over 
once more ‘‘'The Form and Manner of Ordering Priests.’’ 
These words especially press upon him. ‘‘We have good 
hope that ye have well weighed these things with your- 
selves, long before this time; and that ye have clearly 
determined, by God’s grace, to give yourseves wholly 
to this Office, whereunto it hath pleased God to call you: 
so that, as much as lieth in you, ye will apply yourselves 
wholly to this one thing, and draw all your cares and 
studies this way; and that ye will continually pray to 
God the Father, by the mediation of our only Saviour — 
Jesus Christ, for the heavenly assistence of the Holy 
Ghost; that, by daily reading and weighing the 
Scriptures, ye may wax riper and stronger in your 
Ministry; and that ye may so endeavour yourselves, 
from time to time, to sanctify the lives of you and yours, 
and to fashion them after the Rule and Doctrine of 
Christ, that ye may be wholesome and godly examples 
and patterns for the people to follow.’’ 

I have no doubt that the first Mass that the newly 
ordained priest will say will be a Mass of self-oblation, 
of entire consecration of himself to the work to which 
he believes that the Holy Spirit has called him. If his 
preparation has been at all adequate to his vocation it 
will be clearly before his mind that the result of his 
ministry, its effectiveness in God’s sight, will be the 
outcome of the sort of priest he is; that the first neces- 
sity of his opening ministry is that he be something, 
that he have ideals of priesthood that are adequate in 
his life. He will feel as he has never felt before his own 
inadequacy, his own immaturity in spiritual experience, 
the limitations and faults of his preparation, the ex- 
tent to which he has light-heartedly wasted time that 


The Parish Priest 9 


should have been concentrated on his preparation. He 
will realize that he has taken advantage of the indiffer- 
ence of his bishop and of the very incomplete nature of 
the course prescribed for his training, to remain 
spiritually undeveloped and ignorant of much that he 
now for the first time completely realizes as his pressing 
need. He has handed over to him a cure of souls, so 
many unknown people whom it is his ‘‘bounden duty to 
bring. . . unto that agreement in the faith and knowl- 
edge of God, and to that ripeness and perfectness of 
age in Christ, that there be no place left among you, 
either for error in religion, or for viciousness in life.’’ 

With these things before his eyes and pressing upon 
his conscience he will naturally be thrown back to con- 
sider how he is to meet his newly and possibly lightly 
assumed obligations. He will perhaps in his first medi- 
tation in his new parish ask himself once more, and 
with a keenly aroused sense of the need of a complete 
answer, what it means to be a priest—what actually 
a priest is. He has heard of what is expected of a 
priest, he has been told what are his responsibilities, 
how he ought to conduct himself in view of them. But 
what is he ? What change was effected in him when, in 
the midst of the Mass, the bishop laid his hands upon 
him and gaid: ‘‘Receive the Holy Ghost for the Office 
and Work of a Priest in the Church of God, now com- 
mitted unto thee by the imposition of our hands. Whose 
sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose 
sins thou dost retain, they are retained.’’ What is a 
priest? 

The spiritual writers upon priesthood have for the 
priest this title—alter Christus, another Christ: a man 
therefore who has been brought into such relation to 





10 The Parish Priest 


Christ that Christ manifests Himself through him in a 
special way. There is a true sense in which the priest 
is what Christ is and does what Christ does: so close is 
their union that their operation is one. 

Jesus Christ is a Priest forever, the One Mediator 
between God and man. By His One Sacrifice forever 
He has opened the gates of heaven to all who believe 
on Him; and because His sacrifice is for ever He forever 
holds the gates open and the way into the Holiest is 
clear. He ever liveth to make intercession for us, and 
His intercession is the pleading of the sacrifice made 
once for all upon the Cross. Looking through that door ~ 
—the door which the sacrifice of the Cross set wide— 
the seer of the Apocalypse beholds ‘‘and, lo, in the midst 
of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst 
of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain.’’ This 
Lamb Who is the eternal Sacrifice is also the ‘‘ Priest 
forever’? Who offers the Sacrifice: both Priest and Of- 
fering are one. 

But this which S. John beholds in heaven—this marvel 
of the Eternal Priest Who is also the Lamb of the 
eternal Sacrifice—is not simply a part of the glory of 
heaven reported to us for our encouragement, but is also 
a fact of the experience of earth. The Sacrifice that is 
there is also here, for there and here are one. The 
worship of the Church is on earth as well as in heaven: 
the Priest that offers there, offers here. The difference 
is that there the elders and the living creatures and the 
multitude of the redeemed see face to face; here we see in 
a glass, enigmatically. Here therefore the invisible 
Priest is made visible in one who is set apart to represent 
Him, in one who has been raised to union with Him and 
to participation in His Priesthood, so that the acts of 


The Parish Priest 11 


the visible priest, rightly performed, are the acts of 
the invisible Priest, Whose medium of action the human 
priest is. What the earthly priest does rightly, that 
the heavenly Priest actually does. There is in fact only 
one priest in the full sense of the word; the human 
being is priest only by virtue of his being merged in 
Christ. When the priest baptizes it is Christ who bap- 
tizes; when the priest pronounces words of absolution 
it is Christ that absolves; when the priest offers the 
Sacrifice it is Jesus Christ who is at once Priest and 
Victim. The function of the priest is to be the visible 
instrument through which the Eternal Priest acts. 

These things we conceive our newly ordained priest, 
kneeling by the first altar at which he is called to minister, 
to be going over in his mind, trying to make them real 
to himself. This is what it means to be a priest; this 
is what he is called to; this is what the words of the 
bishop meant; this is what is implied in the questions 
he answered; this is the life before him—a priest for- 
ever, alter Christus! ‘‘Who is sufficient for these 
things?’’ he asks; and his answer is, as the answer of 
the Apostle, ‘‘our sufficiency is of God; who has also 
made us able ministers of the new testament’’ and there- 
fore ‘‘I can do all things through Christ who strength- 
eneth me.’’ He cannot, he realizes as he kneels here, 
plead unworthiness or inability—it is too late for that. 
Moreover by the fact of his ordination he has been made 
worthy and able, he has been, not endowed with a new 
office, but raised to a new state. Gifts of the Holy 
Spirit have been bestowed upon him that he may fulfil 
the vocation wherewith he is called. 

As the young priest goes on to think out how his im- 
maturity is to be ripened into the fulness and maturity 


12 The Parish Privet’ 


of the priestly life, how he is to become the man who 
can represent Christ to His flock, how he is to gain 
the experience which is to give him the knowledge and 
wisdom to guide the flock over which the Holy Ghost. 
has made him overseer, the first answer to himself will 
be, ‘‘it must be done systematically’’; in other words, he 
will seek to prevent waste by imposing upon himself a 
rule of life. A rule of life of some sort is absolutely 
necessary if one is not to waste a great part of one’s 
time. In the case of the business man the rule is im- 
posed by the nature of his occupation: he has to spend a 
stated time in doing stated things; he cannot drop into 
his place of business when he feels like it, stay as long 
as he likes and do what appeals to him while he is there. 
Any business would fail in six months which is con- 
ducted with the lack of system which quite commonly 
is the reflection in a parish of the lack of personal 
discipline in the parish priest. To make calls when one 
feels like it, to get up a sermon when it can no longer 
be put off, is a clear indication of a lack of interior 
discipline in life. | 

A rule is not an end in itself; it is an instrument for 
the accomplishment of certain results. In itself a per- 
sonal thing, the form it takes will be imposed by the 
nature of one’s work. <A general rule to fit all lives is 
impossible, and failure in rule-making is often due to the 
attempt to apply to one’s life a rule that was intended 
for a life otherwise circumstanced. One’s rule must 
be made after consideration of one’s circumstances and 
modified as circumstances change or one finds the rule 
not productive of the best results. 

Yet inasmuch as there are certain fixed elements in 
a priestly life there are certain elements which of | 


The Parish Priest 4 Ds 


necessity will enter into any rule. We are at present 
concerned with those elements which have to do with the 
spiritual discipline of the priest. The first of these is 
of course the rule of prayer, using prayer in the 
broadest sense. Routine daily prayer we need not 
touch upon. The intercessions which arise out of a 
priest’s work and are constantly suggested by that work 
need stated time and place if they are at all profitably 
to be offered. I read of someone—I think it was a 
Protestant minister—who was accustomed to go into 
his empty church and standing successively by each pew 
pray for a few moments for those who sat there. That 
is very suggestive: personal intercessions of that sort 
are no doubt helpful both to people and priest. In any 
case personal needs suggest themselves whether through 
request or otherwise, and the priest’s life must make 
room for them. Unless the prayer-life is ordered by a 
rule many of its obligations and opportunities will be 
missed. Often the close of a meditation will suggest 
subjects for intercession, as the meditation so commonly 
brings one’s thoughts about to the obligations and 
neglects of one’s life. Any resolution for action can 
quite easily flow out into a period of intercession for 
which the meditation has prepared one. It is always 
well to bring the meditation thus into touch with the 
daily experience. 

The meditation seems the central point of the devo- 
tional rule of the priest, especially of the young priest. 
The experienced priest may very well substitute other 
and more advanced forms of prayer, at least in great 
measure; but the priest whose spiritual character is still 
in the process of formation can hardly dispense with 
meditation. This is primarily an attempt, renewed day 


14 The Parish Priest 


by day, to understand and personally to apply the truths 
of the Christian religion. What method shall be followed 
is ‘a matter of personal temperament and training. By 
the time one reaches the priesthood one ought to be 
familiar with the technique of meditation and ready to 
choose some special line if one has not already done so. 
I am inclined to think that the form may very well be 
changed from time to time to avoid monotony. I am 
wholly in favor of writing a meditation; this compels 
concentration on the subject and prevents waste of time 
in dreaming. Often we are just letting the mind drift 
when we imagine that we are thinking. Naturally, not 
every word of the meditation need be written; but an 
outline can be jotted down of sufficient fulness to prove 
that we have been consecutively thinking during our 
half-hour and not drifting off to the planning of a Sun- 
day School party or memories of the last meeting of the 
altar guild. 

Books of helpful outlines and worked out meditations 
are not very abundant in English. There are plenty of 
them and most helpful ones in French. The prepared 
outline is perhaps the best introduction to the practice of 
meditation, not of course to be slavishly followed but 
used as suggestion. The great mistake in using an 
outline is that of attempting to limit one’s thought to 
and by it either in breadth or length. One does not 
have to get through a given meditation this morning: 
if the first point prove suggestive one need go no further. 
And if any point proves suggestive of a helpful line 
of thought it is best followed even if it lead off at a 
tangent. The point is that one is learning to think 
spiritually, to penetrate into the depth of Christian 
truth and to apply such truth to one’s own circum- 


The Parish Priest 15 


stances. It is wholly to be avoided that we apply truth 
to other lives: we are trying to see ourselves; in the 
- end, no doubt, ourselves in relation to others, and so we 
can pass, as has been suggested, to intercessory prayer. 

The outlines we use are always founded on Holy 
Scripture and by the use of them we are learning to 
use Scripture devotionally. The time will come sooner 
or later when we can drop, for a time at least, the out- 
line and make our own Scriptural studies. To be help- 
ful the start from the text of the Scriptures takes more 
time as the outline ought to be prepared before we begin 
the meditation; to attempt to meditate directly from the 
text without preliminary study is a method inferior to 
prepared outlines—the man whose meditations we are 
using did do the preliminary study. Commentaries are 
probably the least helpful form of religious literature, 
but a brief commentary will help us to the meaning 
of the text—perhaps; but our preparation is to read the 
text in its content and then to think out the meaning 
and put it in such form that we can use it for the 
basis of our meditation. We ought not to use the medi- 
tation period for this work; if we are pressed for time 
it is better to make an outline one day and a meditation 
the next. 

The routine of ‘the priest includes daily offices of 
some sort. If he can recite Morning and Evening 
Prayer in the church at such times that he can hope 
for a few of his people to join him, that is well. He is 
then acting as the priest of the parish and presenting to 
God the devotions of the parish. Reciting these offices 
at odd times in his study he is in a measure doing the 
same thing, but less helpfully and hopefully. I do not 
feel that the recitation of Morning and Evening Prayer 


16 The Parish Priest 


in this Church are of absolute. obligation, or that they 
are very helpful forms of devotion as the priest’s 
- private office. The priest may very well find it more 
helpful to use in private the Breviary or some of the 
Breviary offices. The steadiness of some formal office | 
is much to be desired. | 

The devotional life of the priest himself as well as that 
of the parish centers in the Mass. He will as a normal 
part of his priestly action stand morning by morning 
at the altar offering the Sacrifice. I am convinced that 
there are almost no parishes in the Church where a 
priest may not have a daily Mass; and if there are any 
such parishes Catholics are justified in avoiding them. 

The priest’s life leads up to the Mass when as the 
representative of Jesus Christ—or, as he indeed is, the 
instrument of His action—he offers the one eternal 
Sacrifice for the living and for the dead. The very 
nature of his action almost compels the priest to be a 
certain sort of man. It is inconceivable that a priest 
should stand day by day at the altar and not feel a 
constant impulse to improve his life, The very act of 
offering the Mass imposes preparation and thanksgiving, 
imposes a type of life which we describe as sacrificial. 
No doubt there are evil priests and careless priests; 
but normally the daily Sacrifice will demand and insure 
a life striving to offer itself ever more perfectly. This 
is especially true under the circumstances of the Angli- 
can Communion where no one is compelled to offer the 
daily Sacrifice. 

There is, to be sure, always the danger that one may 
fail to make the best of one’s privileges; that one’s pre- 
paration may be careless and one’s thanksgiving mean- 
ingless. These are faults to be guarded against and sins 


The Parish Priest 17 


the effects of which are soon obvious in the life. A 
special danger is that of dropping (if one may use the 
word) the Mass as soon as one ends one’s thanksgiv- 
ing—the failure to carry the Mass with us through the 
day. The devotional day centers at the altar; the Mass 
has meant the offering of oneself, one’s soul and body; 
it has embodied certain intentions; we cannot without 
spiritual loss abandon them and lose them from our 
thoughts. The life of the priest through the day is 
purified and strengthened as he carries the Mass with 
him wherever he goes. The interior prayer, the cease- 
less prayer of the day, its recurring intercessions, its 
ejaculations, its aspirations, go readily back and connect 
themselves with the Mass. They may be described as 
the outgrowth, the fruit, of the Mass during the day. 
So the day which takes its spring from the Mass is 
rich and fruitful and plenteous in good works. 

Kach Mass has, of course, its special intention. It 
is here that the parish priest gathers up all the threads 
of the parish life. It is here that he constantly presents 
his people and their needs before God. The Mass is 
not his private office; it is the offering of the Catholic 
Church in this place, the means of the Church’s worship 
and approach to God. There may be no one present 
but priest and server, but that does not make it a 
‘‘private Celebration’’; it is still the worship of the 
parish, all the more needed that the members of the 
parish take small heed of it. It is here in this morning 
hour that the priest collects and lays before God all the 
manifold needs of the people committed to his charge. 
Here the names of the sick and the sorrowful, the needs 
of the sinner and the wanderer, are spread out upon 
the Sacrifice. All that he has learned during the pre- 


18 The Parish Priest 


ceding day of the needs of his people are presented here. 
Here at the altar he prays for all those who have asked 
his intercession and also for that pathetic class, so many 
in every parish, who feel no need of prayers at all. 
The life of a parish without the Mass is a desert; the 
life of a priest who does not say his Mass has missed 
the main source of its possible energy. 

The use of the Sacrament of Penance is an essential 
element in the discipline of the priestly life. I am not 
concerned with the theology of the Sacrament of 
Penance, or with its obligation, but only with its dis- 
ciplinary value. It is taken for granted that any priest 
at all likely to read these pages will from time to time 
as need has arisen resort to this Sacrament for the 
forgiveness of sins. Aside from this, the primary use of 
the Sacrament, there are certain elements involved in 
its use which are of high value in the discipline of the 
character. In the first place there is the emphasis 
placed on the knowledge of self which is implied in 
the preparation for confession. Starting from this 
necessity the careful priest will extend the practice of 
self-examination till it covers much more than the 
immediate preparation for confession. He will arrive 
at the understanding that in order to know his sins he 
needs to know much more than his sins; he must know 
himself in his innermost motives and impulses. He 
must be a thorough student of his own psychology. 

What the priest is concerned with is not to avoid 
such and such sins, but with the development of a char- 
acter to which sin of any sort will less and less appeal. 
One’s power to resist temptation does not lie in strength 
of will which may be called out in the face of some 
actual temptation—-an immediate spiritual reaction, as it 


The Parish Priest 19 


were—but in the careful training of the spiritual powers 
into obedience to the known will of God. Temptations, 
no doubt, have to be resisted one by one as they arise; 
but they will be resisted successfully only when they 
meet the opposition of a prepared life. The habitual 
preparation of the soul, the drawing out and maturing 
of its spiritual powers, alone prepares one for the 
sudden onset of temptation. In the case of a person 
living a careful life almost all sins are the result of 
surprise. Such a person as a priest who takes his 
priesthood seriously will not plan and execute even 
small sins. He will yield from time to time to the sudden 
onset of temptation; he will be taken unawares and 
without time for deliberation. In such sudden and un- 
foreseen temptations the defence must be what is called 
remote preparation, the cultivation of a type of life in 
which the thoughts and imaginations as well as the 
activities are directed godward, resulting in a character 
which is sensitive to any approach of sin and thereby 
thrown on its guard. Such a character is habitually 
watchful with a defence through which temptation finds 
it difficult to force an entrance. 

The type of self-examination which underlies such a 
character formation is of necessity of a very broad 
kind. It is watchful over the expenditure of time and 
the direction of energy. It is much more concerned with 
the practice of virtue than with the avoidance of sin. 
It looks on life as positive, not negative, as directed 
to acquisition and growth, not to the barren work of 
dodging the undesirable. There are many people whom 
we rather thoughtlessly call good people whose goodness 
upon analysis turns out to be negative; they never com- 
mit sin, but then they never do anything at all! They 


20 The Parish Priest 


drift through life making and receiving a: minimum of 
impression. But goodness is not that futile and inverte- 
brate thing; it is godlikeness, the development into 
activity of the spiritual capacity which is one conse- 
quence of our incorporation into Christ and of our 
being indwelt by the Holy Spirit. It is therefore our 
progress in virtue which is the essential subject of 
our self-examination when our lives are rightly directed 
to the development of Christian and priestly character. 

Having our ideals of priestly character and an earnest 
desire for growth cleared up by a knowledge of self which 
is not a knowledge of defects and weaknesses but a 
knowledge of powers and possibilities, our advance will 
be energized by our use of the sacraments. The Mass, 
certainly, is the daily renewal of our union with our 
Redeemer and the constant ministry to us of sanctifying 
grace. But also the Sacrament of Penance has its 
place in the upbuilding of the spiritual life. The effect 
of that Sacrament is not simply negative—the removal 
of guilt. All Sacraments have a positive quality, in that 
they impart sanctifying grace to the soul that rightly 
receives them. A reason therefore for the regular re- 
ception of the Sacrament of Penance even by those who 
are not in mortal sin is found in this ministry of healing 
and invigorating grace. The wounds of sin are healed 
and the powers of the soul are strengthened to meet the 
demands of life. 

‘‘Tt is difficult to keep the youth of the soul and the 
vigor of a supernatural life,’? some one has said. As 
the priest grows older he feels the truth of this. In the 
first years of his ministry he meets the problems of 
his ministry with a light and bouyant heart; but the 
years pass and the experience of disappointment and 


The Parish Priest Aub 


failure in dealing with others, and still more in dealing 
with himself, press him toward pessimism and tempt 
him to lassitude and indolence. A wise old bishop who 
was at one time my confessor said to me one day, I 
suppose for my consolation: ‘Middle-aged priests 
rarely have much spiritual development; they are too 
much taken up with external things, with the details 
of their work.’’ That no doubt is a very menacing 
danger and one to be guarded against. There are 
priests who are so busy helping others to be saints that 
they have no time to be saints themselves. Spiritual 
writers on the priesthood abound in warning to such, 
and they are needed especially in our time and country. 
The priest is Judged to-day by what he does and not by 
what he is; and he is only too likely himself to acquiesce 
in this standard of judgment. But to do so is to dis- 
regard the meaning of his vocation and the true 
significance of his work. For all work is the work of 
a certain kind of man, and though the character of 
that work to the superficial observer may not seem dif- 
ferent, whether done by an unspiritual or by a spiritual 
man, there is nevertheless a very deep difference and 
one that ultimately will make itself felt. Every item 
of one’s spiritual training is ultimately translated into 
one’s work. The parish work of the holy priest and of 
the ordained social worker will be strikingly different 
in their results. The sermon of the saint will easily 
be distinguished from the discourse of the Rotary Club 
orator. The saint may be less interesting, but in the 
priesthood he is more worth while. 


CHAPTER II 
THE INTELLECTUAL Lire OF THE PRIEST 


Propasiy the greatest danger that the priest, espe- 
cially the young priest, has to meet, is the danger of 
disorder, the danger of a badly administered life. This 
danger is much greater in the life of the priest than in 
the life of the average layman. The business man has 
specific duties to perform at specific times and they 
must be performed under penalty of loss of business 
or position. The competition of the modern business | 
world does not permit of either slackness or disorder. 
The life of the priest permits of both. He feels in no 
danger of losing his position even though he conduct 
his priestly and pastoral life in a manner that would 
ensure immediate cessation of employment if he were 
a layman. He can put off his work or scamp it or 
neglect it altogether with very small risk. One of the 
wonders of the world is the small amount of accomplish- 
ment that is expected of the parish priest. 

Aside from sloth and carelessness the work of the 
priest is not without temptations: his very energy at 
time constitutes a danger. For the alert and energetic 
priest will commonly throw his energy into certain speci- 
fied works which seem to him (and no doubt rightly) 
of great importance, at the expense of others for which 
he will explain that he has ‘‘no time.’’ The result will 
be a one-sided development. He may be by tempera- 
ment a student and stress the intellectual aspect of his 
work, the preparation of sermons and so forth; or, 
more commonly, he will be attracted by problems of 
administration and find himself overwhelmed in the de- 


The Parish Priest 23 


tails of multitudinous organizations. Having started 
the machinery he has to keep it going, and because he 
is rushing about a good deal and ‘‘busy here and there”’ 
he seems to himself and to most others to be living a 
most effective priestly life. 

Just because the life of the parish priest contains so 
many more elements than that of the business man it 
is much more difficult of adjustment; it requires thought 
and foresight and careful training to ensure that no 
one element shall be excluded. The priest needs con- 
stantly to examine himself to be sure that he is not filling 
his life with occupations that he finds congenial, and 
discovering in the fact that he is fully occupied an 
excuse for the neglect of those priestly occupations to 
which he is not naturally attracted. It is for this reason 
that we hear so many priests say that they have no 
time for reading or study; that they much regret that 
they are unable to pursue some consistent course of 
study; but really the details of parish life, the meeting 
of guilds, and soon..... | 

What has to be faced, of course, is that the proper 
functioning of the priestly life demands adequate at- 
tention to a variety of obligations and interests. As 
time is limited this is largely a matter of wise adjust- 
ment. The priest has to face the fact that his day is 
not an eight hour day, or even a ten hour one. And he 
must understand that his intellectual life and the culti- 
vation of it is not a taste to be indulged in the intervals 
of guilds and calls, but a serious obligation to be 
seriously and steadily pursued. If he is accustomed to 
say, ‘‘I have no time for study to-day because there 
is a meeting of the guild,’’ he had better begin to say 
‘*T cannot attend the guild to-day because I am getting 


24 The Parish Priest 


behind in my studies.’’ He will do well, if that be neces- 
sary, to plan his time from week to week so as to 
insure that the various elements of duty are propor- 
tionately attended to. 

Assuming life so planned and time assured for in- 
tellectual work we are only at the beginning: the 
intellectual work itself has to be planned. Perhaps the 
first thing to be realized is that mere reading is not 
intellectual work, and that as time is limited the pre- 
liminary discipline will deal with the elimination of the 
useless. Such discipline will reduce the newspaper to 
the lowest terms and will cut out the popular magazine © 
wholly and will put the novel in its proper place; thus 
the deck will be cleared for action. The time that is 
allotted to intellectual work will be a regular time— 
there is small use in saying, ‘‘I will read and study so 
many hours a day.’’ Certain hours must be definitely 
set apart and protected. Naturally, the fence will now 
and again be broken down; but we can gradually make 
it secure if we want to. One must insist that in the 
freedom of his life, almost entirely released from ex- 
terior control, the priest does what he wants to and does 
it when he wants to. 

In his studies the parish priest, in the first years of 
his ministry at least, will beware of following his in- 
clination. The Church has need of specialists—a few; 
but a young priest cannot afford to specialize. There 
is a tremendous field that he must in some sort manage 
to cover. This not a matter of taste but of duty. He 
cannot assume that he has finished any subject because 
he has passed an examination on it in the Seminary. 
He has to preach to a mixed congregation and to deal 
with all sorts of people. They will present a great 


The Parish Priest 25 


variety of questions to him for solution and in many per- 
plexities will need guidance. The fact that he is a student, 
even a profound student, in liturgies or in history 
will not help in all cases. He must make a valiant at- 
tempt to be ‘‘an all around man.’’ This ideal, of course, 
will always remain an ideal, but as time goes on he may 
approximate to it. 

Primarily the intellectual obligation of the priest is 
to be a theologian. There is no greater reproach to the 
American Church to-day than the lack of theological 
knowledge among its clergy. Theology is an inexhaust- 
ible subject, when you come to consider it in all its 
branches; and there is no branch that the parish priest 
can afford to neglect wholly. Dogmatic theology is the 
necessary basis of his teaching, but in order to know 
how to bring dogmatic theology into energetic contact 
with life he must pursue the study of theology into all 
its ramifications. That of course means that the priest 
shall be a student of the Bible—which would seem to be 
a superfluous, not to say an impertinent, suggestion, but 
unfortunately is not. It ought to be that the student en- 
tering the Seminary should be familiar with the contents 
of the English Bible: commonly he knows nothing about 
it; commonly, too, I am afraid, he goes out of the Semi- 
nary without having greatly increased his familiarity 
with it. Therefore he is handicapped at the outset of 
his teaching, for his teaching needs to grow out of the 
background of the Bible. No doubt critical study of the 
Bible is a necessity, but the amount of religion thereby 
attained would seem to be negligible. If the Bible con- 
veys a revelation, and if the New Testament presents 
facts and teachings which constitute the essence of our 
religion, it would seem rather plain that familiarity 


26 The Parish Priest 


with the Bible would be the first step in a priest’s 
education, and that that familiarity should be with the 
Bible as a manual of the spiritual life and not as the 
battle ground of criticism. It may be important—from 
a certain point of view it is, no doubt, important—to 
know that such and such a passage is not in all the 
manuscripts, and that this other is thought by Prof. X 
to be a late insertion, though his conclusions are dis- 
puted by Prof. Z. But having determined these ques- 
tions, let us go on to perfection; let us at least find out 
the spiritual value of our Bible when we have got it 
reconstructed in terms of modern scholarship. If we 
are going to teach the Bible it will be because there 
are spiritual values therein discoverable which are of 
present use in life. To the discovery of these values I 
am inclined to think that criticism contributes little: 
the priest must look for them in the Bible itself by 
patient study and meditation. 

Systematic theology in all its branches is the ordering 
of the thought of the Church, the harmonious statement 
of its mind, as to the meaning of revelation. Theology 
has been a developing science because the mind of the 
Church in all ages has been a growing mind—has been 
so intent on drawing out and applying to life the mean- 
ing of the revelation committed to it. Dogmaties is the 
first step in this process and the priest needs to master 
the outline of the Catholic system of dogma. This is 
not a very difficult task nor one that requires much time. 
Endless time may be spent, and indeed well spent, in 
tracing the history and development of dogma; but to 
gain a firm grasp on the elements of dogma, a working 
knowledge of the subject, is not a lengthy task. Dog- 
matic theology is so finely adjusted, so nicely articulated, 


The Parish Priest 27 


it passes from one stage to another in so lucid a de- 
velopment, that the student soon has it fixed in his mind. 
Until he has accomplished this he must stick to his 
books. 

Having accomplished this, rather than wander into 
the fascinating fields of the history of dogma, the field 
of the specialist, he will do well to pass on to one of the 
other developments of theology in application to life. 
As a parish priest he is not a student seeking to satisfy 
an intellectual curiosity, however legitimate, but is 
seeking to fit himself to be a teacher and a guide of 
souls. He may very well then turn his attention to the 
study of morals with a view to fitting himself to preach 
and direct. Most of the morals we read or hear preached 
are not Christian morals at all, but the traditional 
customs and group conventions of the time. There is 
such a thing as Christian morals, though for the present 
largely ignored. The young pastor will do well from 
the start to make it plain that Christian morals rooted 
in the life and teaching of our Lord is what he is com- 
missioned to teach. That will no doubt cut pretty 
sharply across much that his congregation believe and 
are living by and will not conduce to his popularity; 
but if he is to teach what the Church sets him to teach 
it must be-done. I am inclined to think that he will not 
get very much help from Anglican literature in this 
matter. He will perhaps do best to try to understand 
his New Testament unglossed by the assumptions of 
modern industrial civilization. Latin treatises there are 
which will help him to understand the mind of the 
Church, and also to understand the compromises that 
moralists have resorted to under stress of contemporary 
opinion. The social pressure of contemporary conven- 


28 The Parish Priest - 


tions is tremendous, and it requires clear thinking and 
courage to detach oneself from the ‘‘every body does 
it’? which is the sole standard of the average Church 
member, and to present the teachings of the Gospel 
whether men will hear or whether they will forbear. 
Much of the detail of the morality written in books needs 
revision in the light of our Lord’s teaching, needs to 
have the glosses wherewith the centuries have overlaid 
it blotted out that the truth may appear. The young 
priest with an ambition to become a specialist will find 
vast fields here awaiting him. | 

Ecclesiastical morals, the science of Christian conduct, 
touches only certain sides of life. It deals much more, 
as it is treated, with the negative than with the posi- 
tive. The priest must go on, if he is to learn to apply 
dogma to life with thoroughness, to the wide subject of 
spiritual theology. This includes the broad fields of 
ascetic and mystic theology without knowledge of which 
the priest is ill equipped for his work. These branches 
of theology deal with the development of the spiritual 
life, with the discipline and growth of the soul. We may 
say roughly that ascetics deals with discipline and mys- 
tics with development. 

Discipline is not a word in much favor to-day. We no 
doubt hear from all sides—pulpit, platform, bench—of 
the need of it, of the decay of it, of the disaster of the 
loss of it; but get not much positive help to the regain- 
ing of it. In fact the very people who are loudest in their 
lamentations over the loss of discipline are precisely 
those who have done most to destroy it. What are the 
forces which have destroyed discipline in this country? 
Certainly the most conspicious are the Protestant 
churches and the public schools and the lax and senti- 


The Parish Priest 29 


mental administration of justice. In the face of these 
forces, still actively operating, it requires courage and 
optimism to insist that the Christian life is essentially 
a disciplined life; that conduct by principle rather than 
by law is its method, that in place of the narrow self- 
regarding life of current teaching the Christian needs to 
attain life that is God-regarding and neighbor-regard- 
ing, that the call of the Christian is not a call to self- 
indulgence and self-pleasing, but a call to the Cross. ‘‘If 
any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and 
take up his cross daily, and follow me.”’ 

Life as an art: the discipline of a Christian training 
and education—these are what ascetics is concerned 
with. The business of the priest as teacher and guide 
is to show that the Christian life is a distinct form of 
living—that it is not a worldly life with a veneer of 
practices. Neither is the Christian life a miscellaneous 
collection of beliefs and practices gathered haphazard as 
one goes on, but a life governed by definite principles 
and seeking to develop on definite lines. What is the 
discipline that will develop a Christian life as distin- 
guished from other forms of living? To teach that is 
the business of ascetic theology. It presents an ideal of 
life which is orderly and consistent, in which there are 
definite means adapted to the ends sought, in which one 
starts from a certain point to gain a certain objective. 
Perhaps the priest has no harder task than to impress 
upon people this orderly character of the Christian life, 
this fact of its being a distinct mode of living as dis- 
tinguished from a collection of beliefs and practices. Yet 
it is certain that Christian character results, and can 
have its best and complete results only from an 
orderly and disciplined living. Regularity lies at the 


30 The Parish Priest | 


bottom of spiritual accomplishment. The ascetic is the 
Christian who succeeds. How can the priest hope to 
break through the thorn-hedge of inhibitory prejudices 
and deeply rooted ignorance which is called into activity 
whenever the words discipline and ascetic are pro- 
nounced, unless he has himself so far mastered ascetic 
theology as to present it as the normal science of spirit- 
uality in the formation of Christian character? 

Ascetic theology is the theology of discipline; mystic 
theology is the theology of growth. Essentially it has 
to do with the growth and development of the life of 
union initiated in baptism wherein the baptised person 
is born again and made a partaker of the divine nature. 
What is involved in this new life, the laws of its growth, 
the means it makes use of, the ends it seeks to attain, 
are the subject matter of mystic theology. The Chris- 
tian religion is a mystical religion, that is, it is the re- 
ligion of the manifestation of the life of God in the 
soul of man. It is a great mistake to confound the study 
of it with the study of certain ‘‘mystical phenomena.’’ 
Such things as visions, voices, levitations, and other 
physical phenomena undoubtedly attend certain mystical 
states but they are no essential part of the mystic life, nor 
are they phenomena that the mystic seeks or desires. 
The mystic life is simply the unfolding of the normal 
Christian life, a life which is supernaturally engendered 
and supernaturally sustained. The parish priest needs 
to have this very clear in his mind for it will control the 
content of his preaching and define the end to which he 
is seeking to lead people. Failing this understanding, 
he is liable to substitute one or another modern system 
of thought or action for Catholic Christianity. He will 
fall into the error of assuming that Christianity is the 


The Parish Priest aE 


same thing as orthodoxy—the holding of a creed with- 
out the good works and life which are its Catholic out- 
come; or of thinking the Christian religion to be suffici- 
ently expressed by moral action, meaning usually by 
moral action conformity to the conventional standard 
of conduct current about him. Both creeds and morals 
have their place, but by themselves they are not ade- 
quate expressions of the Christian religion. That re- 
ligion is a life: ‘‘I am come that they might have life, 
and that they might have it more abundantly.’’ The 
Christian is called to be a saint—nothing less; and the 
meaning of sanctity is the expression of the divinely 
imparted Life in our lives. Because this is Christianity, 
and because mystical theology is the theology of the im- 
parted and manifested Life, the priest must needs be 
well read in that subject. 

And let him not be led astray either by the fact that 
his seminary course has neglected this branch of sacred 
studies, or by the fact that he will be warned against 
mystics as impractical and unsuited to the temper of the 
twentieth century. If his education has been worth while 
it will at least have taught him not to take things for 
granted. He must study for himself; and so doing he 
‘will soon perceive that the mystical presentation of re- 
ligion is its historical presentation; that, in fact, it is 
the only presentation of it that does not evacuate most 
of the Gospel of its meaning and render wholly unintel- 
ligible the sacramental system. He will also learn that 
great Christian mystics, so for from being the idle 
dreamers of popular semi-religious imagination, were 
the most active and practical of Christian leaders. If 
the student will read the lives of S. Catherine of Genoa, 
of St. Catherine of Siena and of S. Theresa; if he will 


32 The Parish Priest - 


study the daily life of S. Francis of Assisi and of S. 
Vincent de Paul, he will get his mind cleared of any 
superstitions about the ‘‘idleness’’ of the mystic life. 
He will find that as a mode of activity it will soon 
exhaust the most enthusiastic advocate of base-ball or 
the movies as a mode of Christian activity and teach- 
ing. <A ‘‘hike’’ @ la S. Theresa would, one fancies, tire 
the most indefatigable leader of camp-fire girls. 
History, naturally, must be widely read. Our Chris- 
tianity is not a late invention but an historic religion, 
and cannot be understood save as its development is 
studied. It cannot be understood except its whole devel- 
opment is studied. To study the first century and then 
leap to the Reformation or to modern times is in fact to 
know nothing of the Christian Church. It is not much bet- 
ter to study some imagined ‘‘primitive Church’’ and then 
make the leap to Anglicanism. That is the easy way to 
misunderstanding—to a misunderstanding which has 
been fruitful in the creation of the myth of ‘‘national 
Churches,’’ and has injected into Anglican theological 
writings much that it is impossible to defend. If the 
Church failed or became so utterly corrupt that we 
need pay no attention to it after some ill-defined 
‘primitive period,’’ or if, as a Protestant historian has 
alleged, no one understood 8. Paul’s teaching till the 
time of Luther—then there is little to say for the Church 
as a divine institution. The study of the history of the 
Church as a whole and not of some selected period, is 
the study of the unfolding life of a divine organism. It 
clears our brains and teaches us to cease to look with 
suspicion on everything that is new in the development 
of the Church’s life. The Church, a living, thinking 
being, must grow to a better understanding of its mean- 


The Parish Priest oe 


ing and mission as the years go on. Just because it is 
living, its life will continue to express itself in changing 
ways. It will have certain fixed ends but it will develop 
new means for the attainment of those ends. It will 
no doubt experiment and retain what it finds useful and 
abandon the unsuitable. No sane student will draw 
arbitrary lines, and accept or reject purely on the 
ground that this is Eastern and that Roman or Anglican. 
What the student will seek is the means which experi- 
ence has approved as the best, as helpful to the attain- 
ment of spiritual results. 

For the priest is studying not for the purpose of 
establishing this or that theory but to discover how 
best he can present Christian truth to his people and 
aid and lead in the development of their spiritual life. 
His study of history therefore will tend to be largely 
a study of Christian practice and experience. He knows 
that Christianity has come through the centuries as an 
experience, as a thing lived and done, as a force in the 
shaping of life. What, he wants to know, has aided in 
this; what has fostered and developed experience? Is 
his own ministry, he asks himself, failing in effectiveness 
because of badly apprehended truth or because of truth 
unapplied or clumsily applied? What light does the 
experience of the past throw on the solution of the 
problem on which he is engaged? In his study of 
spiritual experience he will not ask the date at which a 
certain means came into use: he will ask the effect of 
it—did it actually help? Did it aid in the spiritual 
growth of people? If it helps, what sane person cares 
when it was first used or who first used it? It may 
have been used by S. Francis or 8. Ignatius, by John 
Wesley or Gen. Booth—who cares? One does not study 
the history of ceremonial or practice from the archaeo- 


34 The Parish Priest: 


logical standpoint, one does not seek to know of a 
prayer or a devotion the period of its author; one wants 
to understand the history of it as a force in life, as an 
aid to holiness. 

The parish priest needs to be well read in apologetics. 
Some priests seem to avoid the subject, whether be- 
cause of its difficulty or because they scent danger in 
it, | do not know. To me, it is the most fascinating of 
studies. One may very likely have to force one’s at- 
tention to a book with which one agrees, but when one 
disagrees, when one finds one’s pet beliefs and deepest 
prejudices attacked, one comes awake! Marvelously 
stimulating reading are many of the attacks on one or 
another aspect of Christianity or on religion as a whole: 
marvelously amusing are others in their utter futility. 
But the futile need attention as well as the others be- 
cause the minds of so many human beings are the 
ready instruments of futility. Criticisms have to be 
answered; one needs to formulate in one’s own mind at 
least an answer to all the attacks one meets. It is to 
show oneself futile to turn one’s back on them as though 
they had no existence. 

The modern attacks on Christianity are no keener 
than the ancient. One sometimes thinks that Celsus 
said all that is to be said. But each generation has 
its own form of attack, brings up new material or 
presents the old in a new way. 

The Christian apologist needs first of all to be certain 
of what it is that he has to defend. It has turned out 
as the result of centuries of experience in controversy 
that a good deal that was taken for granted as an es- 
sential part of divine revelation and of the Catholic 
faith is not such. The best result of the attacks has 
been the increasing clearness of the demarcation of 


The Parish Priest Bis) 


the line of defence. We have come to see that many 
widely held beliefs were not a part of, but were im- 
posed upon, our faith. I suppose no Churchman at 
least would to-day insist on the historical character of: 
the early stories of Genesis or the book of Jonah. That 
does not mean that we have jettisoned large parts of 
the Old Testament, but that we have arrived at an 
understanding of those parts that enables us to use 
them with better effect. A belief in the historical char- 
acter of the book of Jonah, for example, leaves it quite 
useless spiritually, and leaves it on our hands as a 
heavy obligation, while our present understanding of 
it leaves it a delightful and inspiring document: we 
can now attach some sense to the word inspiration in 
connection with it. 

In another field, the whole controversy with the ex- 
ponents of science has gradually cleared the ground. 
Much no doubt remains to be done before we come to a 
complete agreement. The scientist has to learn to re- 
main a scientist and the theologian a theologian. It 
has, however, become clear that scientific description of 
phenomena yields no final truth but only provisional 
hypotheses, and moves in a region where theology has 
nothing to say. Theology, for its part, deals with truth 
of another order, that is, with truth of revelation with 
which science has no contact. What is at present needed 
is the recognition that the universe is a whole, including 
both orders of truth—that it cannot rightly be split into 
warring sections each refusing to recognize the other. 
The question as to miracles, for example, ceases to be 
troublesome when it is recognized that God is not a 
power apart from the universe, intruding on its action 
from the outside, but a power manifesting Himself 
within the universe, of whose action both the natural 


36 The Parish Priest . 


law and the miracle are modes. From the point of view 
of religion one mode of action is as ‘‘natural’’ as the 
other. 

The present ‘‘war of religion’’ is not so much with 
natural science as with psychology. The psychologist 
has succeeded to the cocky attitude which was the attri- 
bute of the scientist in the eighties. At present he 
seems quite certain that he has put religion as a super- 
natural fact out of court. He is, however, much more 
certain of this negative than he is of any positive system 
of psychology so far developed. We are at present in 
the stage in which we are told that ‘‘psychology 
teaches’’ with much the same accent as we were told a 
generation ago that ‘‘science teaches.’’ Religion how- 
ever still goes on and probably will for some time go 
on in quietness; and after a little the psychological tutor 
will calm down and recognize the proper limits of his 
science. In the mean time the books are stimulating 
and with due care helpful. Also they give rise to many 
crude sermons which have the form of knowledge with- 
out its power. 

All this, no doubt, is very sketchy and fragmentary; 
its one object is to indicate the extent of the field with 
which the young priest has to deal and from the study 
of which he cannot excuse himself. If he has to limit his 
activity in any field the intellectual field is the most 
tempting in which to begin and the neglect of which 
is followed with the most disastrous consequences. The 
apostolic exhortation is that we be ‘‘ready always to 
give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason 
of the hope that is in you,’’ and the answers that will be 
demanded are manifold. Our vocation requires that we 
be prepared. 


CHAPTER III 
Tue Sociau Lire oF THE PRIEST 


Tue circumstances of the life of a parish priest neces- 
sitate a wide social activity. This is for him at once an 
opportunity and a danger—the opportunity of coming 
to know intimately the lives and characters of his people, 
the danger of losing sight of his own character as priest 
in his immersion in social affairs. It is here especially 
that his vocation—in the world and not of it—needs 
to be guarded with great care. The parish priest must 
be in society and yet not of society. His social con- 
tacts must be of a distinct order, of a temper that cannot 
be mistaken. He moves through the social group not 
as an outside observer or as a critic but as a sympa- 
thizing friend; yet it must always be obvious that 
there are limits beyond which he does not go. His not 
passing them is not necessarily criticism of those who 
do; there are quite innocent and harmless things which 
nevertheless are unbecoming in a priest. His character 
as the servant of God and the ambassador of Christ 
must always be preserved. 

For the life of the priest must be one that at all 
times and under all circumstances commands respect. 
There must be no abrupt transitions in his life. His 
parishioners must not have forced on them a contrast 
between the man who teaches in the pulpit and ministers 
at the altar and the man they meet at the club and at 
dinner. The priest must be obviously the same man in 
both places, professing the same principles, guided by 
the same ideals. The words he speaks in a sermon, the 
advice he gives in the confessional, must not seem strange 


38 The Parish Priest ~ 


to those who have met him under other conditions of 
life. | 

In order to live his social life successfully the parish 
priest must be utterly convinced of his representative 
character. He is presenting Christ to his people; he 
will therefore be concerned that they do not mistake 
the representation. He will in his meditations dwell 
on the social mission of our Lord. Jesus Christ moved 
among men during the years of His ministry, touching 
human life intimately, and in so doing left us an 
example. Much in the way of the conduct of the priestly | 
life ean be learned from a minute study of our Lord’s 
intercourse with men and women. There are wonderful 
pictures in the Gospel, impressionistic sketches, rapidly 
outlined for us with a vividness that leaves them printed 
on the soul. There is the wedding feast at Cana where 
our Lord moves quietly observant among the guests, 
ready to do the kindly thing and relieve the embarrass- 
ment of His host. There is the night interview with 
Nicodemus, the searching dealing with a single soul. 
We recall the scene in Simon’s house, with the dramatic 
entrance of the ‘‘woman of the city’’ with her unguent 
and her tears. We go with the crowd that surges about 
the door of Jairus’ house when the Master and the 
chosen disciples go in to the recalling to life of the 
dead child. These and many other scenes from the 
pastoral life are filled full of teaching which is easily 
translated into terms of the parish life of the twentieth 
century. 

The life of the priest is a life given, and given for 
all the members of his parish. He must be as our Lord 
was, and indeed still is, of open and ready access to 
all his people. He has in a degree, no doubt, his own 


The Parish Priest 39 


private life and his own personal friends, but these must 
not occupy and absorb him to the neglect of his parochial 
life. They lie outside that and belong to his leisure. 
We are not now concerned with that but with his public 
relations. In these he will be guided not by his own 
taste and inclination but by the needs of his people. 
When and how can he be helpful? 

One of the dangers of the young priest is lest his 
social interest lead him to identify himself with some 
special social group. This is quite natural in a man 
without pastoral experience finding himself in a strange 
environment. He has just come out of an intense social 
life in college and seminary; he is cast on his own 
resources and is very likely lonely. There are indeed 
few more lonely situations than that of a young priest 
in a small town or country parish. It is difficult to 
find anyone who is in true sympathy with, or has any 
true understanding of, his work and ideals, one who 
ean take his point of view. He has yet to learn that 
loneliness is one of the outstanding modes of sacrifice 
of the priest’s life. He is necessarily lonely if he hold 
to the ideals of the Christ-life which he is ordained to 
interpret. It is often a hard lesson to learn, but learn 
it he must. In his new parish then he finds himself 
in his not very luxurious room in church-house or 
boarding house, and he does not know just where to 
begin or just where to turn. At this point very likely 
well-disposed and kindly people will take him in hand. 
They will offer him society—which is well—but the 
society will be what they are accustomed to. They will 
offer to take him into their circle; they will invite him 
to dinner; they will introduce him at the club. And, 
quite naturally again, they will expect him to be in- 


40 The Parish Priest ~ 


terested in what they are interested in and they will 
expect him to do what they do. 

Now what they do may be quite innocent for them 
and it may be quite innocent in itself and still be im- 
possible for the priest who wishes to preserve his 
priestly character among his people. He is in these first 
days even more than in other days an object of obser- 
vation: he may not be conscious of it, but the people 
who are being kind to him, the parish as a whole, the 
entire community if it be a small one, are observing him. 
He will be criticized whatever he does—he cannot escape © 
that; but within limits he can choose the kind of criticism 
he will have. Let us suppose that after he has been in 
the parish a short time this is what takes place. It is 
remarked between two ancient and devout maiden ladies 
that Fr. Adam danced three times with ‘‘that Hemon 
girl’? at the club party last Monday night. <A Pres- 
byterian lady remarks, ‘‘I understand that that new 
Episcopal minister plays cards.’’ At lunch at the club 
Jones remarks, ‘‘That new minister of ours is some 
sport; sat up and drank his cocktail last night like 
a little man.’’ ‘‘He will get on all right with the young 
people,’’ Smith puts in; and Robinson adds, ‘‘That’s 
so; hear he can play a pretty stiff game of bridge, too.”’ 

But on the other hand, suppose that when well-inten- 
tioned parishoners come forward to help him kill loneli- 
ness he repels them? ‘That is quite as fatal in the 
opposite direction He will gain the reputation of a 
crank and a snob. He will be left alone but with a 
reputation difficult to live down. 

His problem is the problem of being a priest and spirit- 
ual leader among people who have small understanding of 
either. He may, to be sure, be fortunate in meeting a few 


The Parish Priest 41 


people who do understand, but he had beetter not count 
too much on so doing—the opposite sort is more com- 
mon. A priest told me the other day of going to supply in 
a parish to which he hoped to be called as rector. He 
stayed his first Saturday night with one of the vestry. 
After dinner the wife of the vestryman proposed 
bridge, and when the priest said that he did not play, 
she remarked, ‘‘Then you would not be of much use in 
this parish.’’ A vestryman of another parish explained 
that what they wanted as a rector was a ‘‘good club 
man.’’? Unfortunately the membership of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church is largely drawn from that type of 
society—the country club, bridge, have-a-good-time type. 
And just for that reason the parish priest needs to be on 
his guard. He needs not to be deceived by appearances 
and to understand that though they want that type of 
priest, they do not respect him when they have got im. 
They want him because (though this may not be ex- 
plicitly felt) his tolerance and codperation confirms them 
in their way of life. They have carefully and success- 
fully at the outset muzzled their rector and reduced 
him to the necessity of preaching platitudes about social 
service, which no one takes seriously, or which they 
conceive themselves to have fulfilled when they attend 
a bridge given in behalf of the altar guild, or make a 
subscription to the boy scouts. They want this type of 
man because they know that they can comfortably go to 
matins on Sunday and be in no danger of hearing from 
the pulpit anything that can be construed as a criticism 
of their way of life. 

Thoroughly compromised and out of court as a 
spiritual teacher is such a priest. He cannot speak 
plainly and openly to those with whom he is associating 


42 The Parish Priest 


socially, and those who do not belong to that set will 
not listen to him. A young priest who has blundered into 
such a situation, if he still retain the ideals of priest- 
hood, will best resign and begin again elsewhere, now 
enlightened by a dearly acquired experience. He will 
now know better than to identify himself with any set. 
He can now begin in the relation that his quality as 
the representative of Christ suggests. 

It is quite possible to retain one’s self-respect as 
priest and to gain the respect of the community without 
immersing oneself in the world. The priest may mix 
in any society, may be present at any lawful amuse- 
ment, without compromising the respect that is due to 
his office. He can indeed bring the influence of that 
office so to bear on those with whom he associates that 
their respect for him will be increased and his influence 
over them deepened. He can, as we say, make his 
presence felt, and felt in such wise as to be a purifying 
influence upon society. This is his social mission—to 
raise the tone of society; to make it more Christian, to 
discourage all that militates against the Gospel standard 
of life. 

From the Christian point of view the essential weak- 
ness of American social life is the ignoring of Christian 
standards. The members of the Church when they pass 
from the Church to the affairs of daily life, pass (no 
doubt in most cases quite unconsciously) into another 
moral atmosphere. The moral principles that they have 
heard enunciated in the Holy Scriptures which are em- 
bodied in the Liturgy and which are declared from the 
pulpit are largely ignored in daily life. The life of 
business and pleasure reverts to a set of conventions 
which have little in common with the teaching of Christ 


The Parish Priest 43 


and His Church. The transition is unobserved because 
it is habitual and has been so from childhood. The 
Church has taught (if it has at all taught) a set of moral 
principles which the child rarely saw applied in his 
family or governing life among his friends. So far as 
moral principle was grasped at all it was as intellectual 
theory. Real life was led on another plane. Hence life 
when it was not openly anti-christian was non-christian. 
The teachings of the Gospel were unreckoned with in 
its conduct. That was habitually done, practiced, in- 
dulged in, with it would seem a clear conscience, which 
would have been shocking to an instructed Christian 
conscience. There are no greater offenders in this way 
than the members of the Episcopal Church. Society is 
largely dominated by them. No doubt this will be less 
so in the future owing to the break with the Church 
which follows from the social tolerance, not to say ap- 
proval, of divorce. 

In this society the parish priest has place. He is 
related to these people as their rector. His position is 
only less conspicuous, not at all less difficult, if his work 
lies in a country town rather than in a large city. It is 
fatal to his influence—to his priestly and spiritual in- 
fluence—if either he break utterly with society or if he 
lose himself in it. Many priests actually conform to 
the standards that society sets them without protest— 
I mean the silent protest of a man obviously living by 
principles differing from those of the people among 
whom he moves. He does not appear to his people to 
be different, and yet they are conscious that he ought to 
be different. They sometimes feel when their conscience 
is troubled or when they are irritated by criticism that 
their path of justification is to convert their priest 


44 The Parish Priest 


openly to their manner of life. It is not unknown that 
they deliberately do this to vindicate action that they 
know has been criticized. This happened not long ago 
in a large city parish. Irritated by criticism of her 
conduct and angry against the prohibition law, a con- 
spicuous society woman said that she was going to give 
a dinner and was going to serve all manner of drinks 
and was going to ask her rector and her critics would 
see that he would drink all that was offered. And she 
did, and he did. 

While such a woman might regard her rector as a 
valuable social ally, it is quite impossible that she should 
respect him as a spiritual guide. Quite possibly she 
never thought of him in that capacity. In this partic- 
ular case the action of the priest gave grave scandal to 
some who knew it, for the woman naturally boasted of 
her triumph. And it must be so always when the priest 
conforms to a mode of life which is obviously unchris- 
tian. One has to insist continually that life—a priest’s 
life most of all—cannot be governed by the rough and 
ready rules of right and wrong, but must be directed by 
ideals, by what is harmonious with his vocation. It is 
not a question whether one may do this or that without 
violation of any explicit moral laws, but whether the 
act contemplated is harmonious with a priestly life— 
with a life that is seeking to present Christ to men. 
Judged by that standard the action of the priest cited 
is almost unthinkable; and it is only to insult common 
sense and ordinary intelligence to talk about the mar- 
riage in Cana of Galilee. It would have been more in 
harmony with the priestly character to have declined 
silently the proffered drink, leaving the impression of 
protest as the best response that under the circum- 


The Parish Priest 45 


stances could be made to the insult offered to the priestly 
character embodied in the spirit of the invitation. 

Open protests other than by conduct are rarely de- 
sirable. Open protests of principles belong to the sphere 
of public teaching, and a priest need be in a parish 
but a brief while to make it evident to all where he 
stands. He had best quietly and as unobtrusively as 
possible define his understanding of the priesthood and 
what that office involves as soon as may be. He need 
not be flamboyant about it; he need not, as a certain 
priest whom I recall, announce from the pulpit on his 
first Sunday in the parish, that he was a celibate and 
not a candidate for matrimony. It is not hard to let 
one’s principles be known, and when they are known 
people will, as a rule, respect them. The worst men and 
those of the laxest principles, expect a high standard 
in their priest and respect him for having definite prin- 
ciples and for adhering to them. They may find 
themselves more at ease with a social compromiser, 
but in their hearts they utterly despise him Their 
attitude is that of Charles IJ, who promoted to the 
episcopate the man ‘‘who would not take Nellie in.’’ 
One may, to be sure, offend this or that person through 
the way in which one presents the angles of one’s char- 
acter; but in the long run steadiness and definiteness 
of principle will win. I am of course not considering 
the priest whose principles of conduct are the same as 
those of the wordly society of which he is supposed 
to be the spiritual guide. 

‘¢You only lose people by being too stiff.’’ Of course 
one loses people from time to time in any case. The 
question here raised calls for a definition of ‘‘too stiff.’’ 
‘‘Stiff’’? one necessarily must be; ‘‘too stiff’’ one ought 


46 The Parish Priest 


not to be any more than ‘‘too’’ anything else. Our 
Model lost continually through stiffness in the asser- 
tion of truth until it seemed that He had sacrificed 
all hope of the success of His mission through His 
alienation of possible followers, and He raises the 
question to His disciples, ‘‘ Will ye too go away?’’ One 
has to face this possibility of apparent failure, of see- 
ing oneself looking out some morning over empty pews. 
But the apparent failure may be the most brilliant 
success. After all one is not teaching one’s private 
opinions or sticking stiffly by one’s prejudices, but one ~ 
is administering a sacred trust. Our rule is that which 
S. Paul enunciates to S. Timothy: ‘‘Hold fast the form 
of sound words, which thou hast heard of me, in faith 
and love which is in Christ Jesus.’? And in another 
place the great Apostle gives his disciple the rule of 
priestly life: ‘‘Let no man despise thy youth; but be 
thou an example of believers, in word, in manner of 
life, in love, in spirit, in faith, in purity.’’ A judge 
has to administer the law though his doing so bring 
upon him the criticism of all the newspapers. And the 
priest has to teach the Christian religion, an important 
element in which is Christian morals, whatever may be 
the result in his parochial life. He can of course teach 
harshly, or he can teach with charity, but teach he must. 
However compromise may grease the wheels of 
parochial life it ends and can only end in spiritual 
disaster to the priest himself. ‘‘As long as thou doest 
well unto thyself, men will speak good of thee’’—but 
how about God? 

The giving of scandal is a very serious matter in 
the possibilities of a parish priest’s life. Conduct that 
can cause legitimate criticism of the ministry is to be 


The Parish Priest 47 


guarded against with extreme care. One of the minor, 
but by no means negligible, grounds of criticism of the 
priest is the way in which he spends his time. A very 
obvious danger arise from the fact that the priest is 
under no exterior control: within wide limits he spends 
his time as he will. The men of his congregation are, 
as a rule, occupied all day; they have definite hours 
of work, and they are apt to think that they discover 
in their priest a wholly shiftless and lazy mode of life. 
This no doubt is partly due to the fact that many things 
which are part of the priest’s duty do not seem to the 
layman work in any intelligible sense—they may be very 
hard and tedious work to the priest, but to a layman it 
seems not so. This cannot be helped. But also criticism 
grows out of the obvious irregularity of the lives of not 
a few priests. A priest is understood to be always at 
liberty not only to be called upon, as is right, for 
parochial duty, but also to be at liberty to take part in 
any social function or amusement. A priest who can 
always be depended upon to turn up at an afternoon 
tea, or is available for tennis or golf, lays himself open 
to suspicion as an idler and a waster. This can only 
be avoided by the introduction of order into life so that 
he cannot be found available at all times. It is use- 
less to say in excuse or explanation that it is a part of 
the priest’s business to go to teas, and that he has a 
right to recreation and exercise such as are found in 
tennis and golf. That may be perfectly true; but if 
these things are to come into his life without harm to 
it, they must come in an orderly and disciplined way. A 
priest cannot well respond to invitations as though he 
were a member of an idle class: his response to invita- 
tions must make it clear that his life is occupied and 
orderly. 


48 The Parish Priest 


Amusement no doubt the priest is entitled to and re- 
laxation he must have; they are part of his duty to him- 
self. The perplexing questions are about what sort and 
how much. Naturally no strict rules can be laid down; 
life in these matters must be governed by order and 
proportion. There can be no sane objection to the 
priest’s attendance at opera or theatre; but as, unlike a 
business man’s, the priest’s evenings will be largely oc- 
cupied, indulgence in these will be limited. The priest 
ought not to be known in the community as the devotee 
of any sort of sport; he must not be the one man who © 
can be depended upon to make up any sort of a party 
or outing. The priest’s explanation of over-indulgence 
in amusement or sport is that he thus gets to know 
people and is better able to influence them. I doubt 
very much whether the right sort of influence is ever 
gained in that way. It is in fact commonly the other 
way about—it is the priest who is influenced to lower 
the standard of the priestly life. The way in which the 
world obtrudes in life to its detriment is evidenced by 
the adoption of clichés which are current to the effect 
that we are not Puritans, and so forth. It would per- 
haps be better for us in some ways if we were. There 
are members of the Anglo-Catholic group who appear 
to think that complete Catholicity is attained only when 
certain limits which have been customary among 
English speaking peoples are overpassed,—limits both 
of conversation and conduct. Epater les bourgeois is 
not a desirable form of clerical amusement; and the 
cocktail drinking, card playing parson is not likely to 
commend the example of Jesus Christ to his people. 
The impression produced by some of our clergy is not 
the best possible. A young priest told me of the follow- 


The Parish Priest 49 


ing experience during a call in a wealthy suburb. He 
was calling with the intention of finding material for the 
beginning of a new work there. He found a lady, late in 
the afternoon, sitting on her verandah. He introduced 
himself and the lady asked him to sit down. Then she 
pressed a button and the butler appeared, and the fol- 
lowing dialogue ensued: 
The lady: ‘‘Have a whisky and soda, Mr. X—’’ 
Mr. X.: ‘‘Thank you, no.’’ 
The lady: ‘‘A little Scotch, then?”’ 
Mr. X.: ‘‘Thank you, but I do not care for any.’’ 
The lady: ‘‘Then have a glass of wine.’’ 
Mr. X.: ‘‘Not now, thank you.”’ 
The lady: ‘‘ Well, you are the first Episcopal minister 
I ever met who would not take a drink!”’ 
Nowhere is greater care needed by the priest in the 
ordering of his life than in his relations with the women 
of his parish. The obvious rule is—no intimacies; no 
special friendships with young women, whether married 
or not. The circumstances of parochial life where so 
much of the work of the parish is carried on by women 
make relations with them constant. Our multitudes of 
guilds and societies throw the priest into almost daily 
contact with one or another group of women or girls. 
Perhaps it would be well to attempt a break with the 
parochial tradition which requires that the rector shall 
always be present at the meeting of guilds. Now that 
we have so many efficient women, now that women have 
achieved their independence and acclaimed their equal- 
ity with man, it might be well to recognize this fact 
and accept this proclamation at its face value and leave 
them to carry on much of the guild work by themselves. 
There is really no point in requiring that the rector 


50 The Parish Priest 


Se s 


VS 
Pe 
“4 


shall be present to open the guild with a collect. Among 
the acquisitions of female independence ought to be the 
ability to say a collect at the opening of a guild. Prob- 
ably nothing disastrous would happen if no collect were 
said. But saying collects on all sort of occasions is a 
rooted Protestant Episcopal superstition which it might 
be difficult to eradicate; and therefore I would not 
recommend anything so radical. Neither can it be neces- 
sary that the rector should ‘‘drop in’’ at all assemblies 
of female parishioners. Here again it would be as well 
to introduce order and have it understood that the priest. 
has important work to do and may not waste his time— 
though perhaps ‘‘waste his time’’ would not be the best 
or most tactful way of putting it to the ladies. Of course 
it must then be known that he does not waste his time 
but is seriously at work. The rule being established 
that the guild goes on by itself and reports to the rector 
through its president no harm will be done if he drops 
in at the last moment from time to time for a few 
moments harmless chatter. It is alleged that the value 
of the rector’s presence at guild meeting is that it tends 
to eliminate gossip and elevate the conversation; but 
that would seem to be the function of the officers of 
the guild who, if there be need, may take council with 
the rector. In any case possibly not much is gained 
by the process of dimming a disease. A gossip is a 
gossip even when she (or he) is silent, and an enforced 
silence of an hour or two a week will not be of much 
value. 

The young priest will best confine his relations with 
women to seeing them in their own homes and as little 
as possible elsewhere. He had best get rid of the illu- 
sion that he is developing the religion of the young 


The Parish Priest 51 


ladies of his congregation and guiding their spiritual 
life by semi-sentimental talks with them as they wander 
through woodland paths or sit watching the moon rise 
over the sea. The daughters of men are still fair and 
the sons of God are still innocent and guileless—and 
the consequences are what we see about us. When I 
had been a short time in my first parish an old lady 
with the obvious intention of guiding the new rector into 
the right path, said that my predecessor had been ac- 
customed to take the young ladies of the guild out 
boat-riding (wonderful expression). Her intentions 
were no doubt good and, in the feminine manner, pious— 
but I disappointed her and am still unmarried. No 
doubt the Writer of Proverbs was not stating a general 
truth when he said: ‘‘Surely in vain is the net spread 
in the sight of any bird,’’ but occasionally he is right. 

It is a shiftless priestly life that is apt to get into 
difficulties. A well laid out and busy life escapes from 
the fact that it is busy. The things that we have to do 
in the way of devotion and study and active parish work 
keep one’s hands so occupied that the devils finds small 
chance of entrance. If the obligations of the priesthood 
are clearly realized from the start and a valiant effort 
is made to meet them, the social side of life will almost 
automatically takes its proper and proportionate time 
and place. We shall not become habitual diners out, ex- 
pected faces at every social function, haunters of the 
country club, because we have things to do which take 
up our time and have settled a rule of life which puts 
first things first. The danger is that we mistake what is 
first, and substitute first in inclination for first in obliga- 
tion and importance. The success of our work requires 
constant and varied human contact? No doubt: but we 


52 The Parish Priest 


shall get that through persistent calling and getting 
to know people in their families. The best human con- 
tact for the priest is not with the brainless set that 
haunts the country club but with the quiet hardworking 
people who never appear in ‘‘society’’ at all. Let the 
priest visit carefully among these latter folk; let him get 
in touch with men and growing boys; let him be intimate 
with the children, and he will get just the contact and 
inspiration that he needs. It is with such people that 
he can talk freely and simply about the things which are 
his real interest—the things of the spirit. A priest to 
whom the Christian religion is an utterly absorbing 
interest must feel quite astray in a society in which it is 
bad form to speak of religion. There are places where 
the only possible mention of religion is in the form of 
ecclesiastical gossip which is deadening to the soul. 

The ultimate test of whether a priest has any right 
to be in a place is a very simple one—can he be a 
priest there or has he to put off his priestly character 
and present himself in disguise? Can he speak naturally 
and freely of his own interests as the lawyer and the 
physician speak of theirs? If so, then he not only 
presumably has the right to be there but is also bringing 
the right infiuence to bear there. Wherever Jesus Christ 
was He was plainly a spiritual Person intent upon 
spiritual interests. If the priest be indeed the minister 
and ambassador of Christ his interests must be identical 
with those of his Master. He must give the impression, 
not of an idler and trifler who lays aside his spiritual 
interests with his vestments, but of one who, always and 
in all places and under all circumstances brings Christ 
to his people. 


The Parish Priest 53 


The sum of the matter is that the priest must conduct 
his life as one whose primary interest is in the spiritual 
education and guidance of his people. He is not present- 
ing himself as one who is seeking his own interests or 
reputation or promotion. He preaches not himself but 
Christ Jesus his Lord. If this be not his true end he 
will fail as a priest no matter how popular he may he as 
aman. Therefore he must know himself; for it is very 
easy to conduct life on one set of motives or principles 
while ostensibly we are conducting it on another—de- 
ceiving ourselves rather more easily than we deceive 
others. <A true zeal for souls will sometimes lead a 
priest to compromises he ought not to make, but they 
will be compromises for others and not for himself. He 
will never gain any souls to God by anything that dero- 
gates from his priestly life. 


CHAPTER IV 
THe PREPARATION OF THE PREACHER 


Wuat a sermon is depends on what the man who 
preaches it is. The preacher necessarily speaks out 
of his own accumulated experience. The handicap of the 
young preacher is therefore the limitation of his ex- 
perience. It is commonly assumed that any bright man 
can preach; that is not true: any bright man can talk— © 
but that is quite a different thing. 

For what is a sermon? It is a partial presentation 
of the Christian religion, of some fact or truth of it, 
with a view to leading the listeners to action. A suc- 
cessful sermon is one that induces men to act; it may be 
as learned or as clever as you like, but if it does not 
lead men to action it is a failure. Practical Christianity 
is the Christian creed translated into terms of the 
Christian life. It is obvious that a sermon that does 
not flow out of experience will have small possibility 
of bringing about this translation. There, in fact, lies 
one of the great secrets of successful preaching—to be 
able to move to action, to apply a stimulus to the will. 
It is comparatively easy to move people sentimentally, 
and too often that is what is aimed at, the accomplish- 
ment of which seems success. If the preacher can stir 
the emotions, can move to applause or tears, he is 
likely to be considered a great preacher and what is fatal, 
is likely to think himself one. ‘‘What a wonderful sermon 
that was’”’ the departing lady says at the church door; 
most likely it was not a wonderful sermon at all. The 
wonderful sermon is one that sends the congregation 
away thoughtful ‘and silent. No doubt the appeal to 


The Parish Priest D0 
the emotions is perfectly legitimate as a means to an 
end; it is illegitimate as an end in itself. The soul 
whose emotions are constantly stirred and then dis- 
charged otherwise than through action is almost certain 
to fall into an unhealthy state. The preacher who under- 
stands this will be careful to limit his emotional appeals, 
and will not be tempted to do otherwise by the fact that 
the sermons which appeal to the emotions uniformly 
call out more praise than others. We are all human 
enough to like praise; but it is as well if growing ex- 
perience brings with it a slightly cynical attitude to- 
wards its value. 

I do not think that I exaggerate if I say that a really 
successful preacher is a preacher all the tume. I do not 
mean that he is always preaching—far from it; but that 
he is looking at all things with a view to what I may 
call their homiletical value. His own direct experience is 
limited and needs to be supplemented by what he can 
learn of the experience of others. He sees life from one 
angle, but through the eyes of others he can learn how 
it looks from other angles. He reads a book—any book— 
with mind open and alert to the possibility of seeing a 
new presentation of some truth, a new and forcible way 
of putting some old problem. He calls on the family 
of a working man, or he talks with a man at a club, 
and he is getting points of view, estimating difficulties, 
looking for roads of approach. This homiletic attitude 
of mind, this steady pressure of his vocation, is not 
only the justification of his wide reading but the thing 
that makes it necessary. All branches of knowledge 
bring grist to the preacher’s mill; and the novel and the 
poem often help him where the book he expected to gain 
help from fails. 


56 The Parish Priest 


For the successful preacher preaches out of a full 
mind, and that his mind may be full there is need of 
the most varied reading. J am not now speaking of 
intensive study, the study that insures that a priest 
shall be properly educated for his calling—I have al- 
ready spoken of that. I am now speaking of what is 
called general reading. Such reading should be as wide 
as possible—the specialist is rarely an effective preacher. 
Naturally, I do not mean that such reading should be at 
haphazard; as time is limited there must be choice. I 
am convinced that the preacher needs to read fiction 
widely, but it should be fiction chosen with a view to 
the understanding of the passing currents of thought. 
Nothing better reflects the popular mind than the novel 
and the play. Whatever is uppermost in contemporary 
thought is soon reflected there. Whether or not the prob- 
lem novel and play have come to stay, they are very much 
here at present and have great interpretative value. 
Through them, better than through the newspaper, we 
learn what men and women are thinking about and get 
‘‘the modern point of view.’’ It is impossible to esti- 
mate the effect of novel and play on the mind of the 
people, but certainly it is immense. The soul that has no 
very firm grip on dogmatic faith is subjected to a con- 
stant series of suggestions, as that creeds are played 
out, that Christians are narrow-minded and behind the 
times, that priests are ignorant of modern thought, that 
moral strictness is puritanical, and so on. This constant 
stress of suggestion from many angles ends by destroying 
the faith of multitudes. If the preacher is to do any- 
thing to counteract this pressure of suggestion he must 
first of all understand it and its prevalence. He must, 
when he speaks, speak as one who knows. 


The Parish Priest af 


There is always the danger of the preacher becoming 
a back number through his neglect of changing moods of 
popular thought. He may fall into the attitude of the 
fundamentalist and preach sermons which belong to 
another century—if they ever belonged anywhere. At 
this time of day there is nothing but loss of time in 
preaching against evolution or Old Testament criticism. 
‘There was a time when the religious thought of the world 
was frightened by these bogies and spent much breath in 
ardently denouncing them. That time has passed. The 
conservative mind has its value, but it is too timid and 
frightened by the new, not because of what it contains 
but because of what it is afraid that it may contain. 
It begins by denying everything in order to be on the 
safe side. That is foolish but there seems no way of 
avoiding it. When religious thought has had time 
to study and assimilate what is true in the new—then 
the preacher ought to know that and not go on railing 
at accepted truths or opinions. It is never a good or 
wise thing to denounce any movement of thought because 
we find certain elements of it objectionable. Probably 
the greatest intellectual nuisance of modern times is the 
psychologist. He is a most objectionable person in his 
cocksure assertiveness in subject matter in which there 
is as yet no certainty. But it would be stupid to make 
sweeping denunciations of psychology, a science (if it be 
such) which has already made valuable contributions to 
our knowledge and will undoubtedly make more in the 
future. The danger of the preacher is lest he denounce 
without knowledge, or lest he praise on the basis of 
some one book he has lately read. There is perhaps 
no person less helpful than the man who has read one 
book and imagines that he knows the subject. 


58 The Parish Priest 


An essential power of the preacher is what I may 
perhaps call the power of translation. It is not enough 
for the preacher to know, he must also know how to 
impart. The young priest comes to his new work with 
a considerable accumulation of knowledge, but with no 
training as to expression and no experience in dealing 
with concrete cases. If he be intelligent and zealous 
he will understand his limitations and set himself to re- 
move them. In his preparation of sermons and ad- 
dresses he will give much thought to the manner of 
conveying truth. This is not at all the same thing as 
clearness of expression—most fairly educated persons, 
if they set themselves to it, can produce an intelligible 
expression of what they want to say. But the preacher 
is never preaching to an abstract set of people; he is 
addressing a congregation of persons of a certain sort 
and his statements must be shaped in reference to them— 
must be intelligible and forcible not to the teacher but 
to the taught. As one reads the sermons of the ‘‘Caro- 
line Divines’’ one wonders what these learned essays 
interspersed with Hebrew and Greek and Latin could 
have meant, for example, to the crowd of courtiers who 
gathered in the King’s chapel. And one reads some of 
the most wonderful sermons of the last generation, for 
example those of Dean Church, and wonders if they ‘‘ got 
across.’’ 


To translate the Christian religion into terms of con- 
temporary thought is the preacher’s task. That does 
not mean ‘‘translating the creed into terms of the modern 
mind’’ in the current meaning of that phrase; that is, to 
substitue the ‘‘conclusions of modern thought’’ for the 
creed. What is meant is that every generation has its 
own language and mode of expression and that religion 


The Parish Priest 59 


to be intelligible has to be put into these terms, other- 
wise men cannot think about it at all. Eternal truths 
do not have to be changed in this process of translation: 
the equivalent of them has to be found. We do not 
give up the essential truth of the divine Authorship of 
the universe when we pass from a belief in immediate 
creation to a belief in evolution; nor shall we when we 
have in the course of time to pass from evolution to 
some other scientific formula. We do not abandon 
the essential truth of the Ascension when we cease to 
think of heaven as above us. Translation is not con- 
tradiction but a new form of expression to make religion 
intelligible. This requires skill and practice; and it re- 
quires that the preacher understand modern modes of 
thought. Failing that, he will remain largely unintelli- 
gible to others and they to him. And furthermore he 
must understand that this process of translation is as 
job, for the disciples and exponents of the modern mind 
have not the slightest intention of making an effort to 
understand religion. Most of the attacks that are to-day 
made on religion demonstrate that not the very slightest 
effort has been made to understand the thing attacked. 
Most of the opponents of the Catholic religion in the 
United States, those who are undermining the faith 
of the young in our universities, seem to have learned 
all they know of religion in Protestant Sunday Schools. 
They assume on the basis of that that they have a 
competent knowledge of religion and are able intelli- 
gently to criticize it. I presume that they would not 
assume that anyone has the right to set himself up as a 
critic of biology or psychology on the basis of a high 
school course. Naturally the utterances of the average 
college tutor in matters of religion are grotesque. 


60 The Parish Priest 


The preacher therefore not only needs the background 
of technical education but the background of general 
culture. He may seem to many people to be wasting 
his time as he sits by his study fire reading a volume 
of poetry, let us say of Vachel Lindsay or Carl Sandburg. 
There are no doubt parishioners and others who would 
be ready to say that he would much better be out mak- 
ing calls than wasting his time in this way. But would 
he? I am speaking now purely of the preacher and am 
assuming that he has not in fact neglected any branch 
of his parish work. There by the fire he is getting into 
contact with certain expressions of contemporary 
thought—very forceful and vivid expressions. If he is 
reading for the primary purpose of understanding the 
time—this time—in which God has placed him and given 
him work to do, I think that there by the fire he is doing 
very well indeed, is doing very effective parish work. 
In fact, I would go further, and say that he is doing 
more effective work than he would be if he were sitting 
by Mrs. X’s fire and listening to her tale of the tribu- 
lations incident on the character of the modern cook, 
or in Mr. Z’s room listening to him discourse on the 
disasters that will overtake the world if the capitalistic 
system be overthrown. There is work that seems parish 
work but is in fact mere waste of time; and there is that 
which seems mere waste of time and.is valuable work. 
The priest must know how to select. 

Not, however, that I would underrate the contribution 
of an evening spent in listening to the iniquities of Mrs. 
X’s cook or Mr. Z’s fears of social change. They too - 
are human beings, and familiarity with human nature 
in all its divagations is one of the priest’s most valua- 
ble assets. It is what enables him to make his sermon 


The Parish Priest 61 


a living thing as distinguished from an academic dis- 
course. No one can be a really effective preacher unless 
he can understand the intricacies of human motive, the 
innumerable ways in which the human person succeeds 
in hiding from himself the true grounds of his action. 
The average human person is probably not dishonest, but 
he is an adept in the art of self-deception. He thinks 
that he stays away from Mass because he is tired; he 
thinks that he plays golf on Sunday because he needs 
exercise; he thinks that he does not pledge for church 
support because he does not want to bind himself; he 
thinks that he does not go to confession because he does 
not believe in it. In these and in many other ways he 
quite succeeds in deceiving himself and is quite honest 
in explaining his action to his rector when he calls. But 
there is no need that the rector be deceived. He can 
listen to this exhibition of vapid humanity and console 
himself for the momentary boredom by the thought that 
he is learning to understand homo sapiens. He need be 
no more taken in when his female parishioner says: 
‘‘Really, Henry works so hard all the week that I have 
not the heart to wake him up Sunday morning’’, or, 
‘‘Charles is so much better after a Sunday motor trip 
that I feel that I must go with him: it really is my duty, 
isn’t it??? There are always reasons for doing what one 
wants to do, and the member of the Church is rare who 
will frankly say that he is not much interested in reli- 
gion and prefers to have a good time on Sunday to going 
to Mass. Intercourse with such people ought to save the 
priest the trouble of preparing learned discourses on the 
relations of religion and science or the corruption of the 
Papal Curia during the Middle Ages. The power of the 
Old Testament prophets which still thrills us as we read 


62 The Parish Priest 


their words after all these centuries and in an utterly 
different environment, lies in the fact that they were ad- 
dressing their words to living human beings whose faults 
and virtues they understood. Their message prefaced 
with ‘‘thus saith the Lord’’ cut sharply into the lives 
of those who listened—so sharply in fact that the result 
was that the prophets ‘‘had trial of cruel mockings 
and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprison- 
ment: they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were 
tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about 
in sheepskins, and goatskins; being destitute, affiicted, 
tormented.’’ 

To understand human nature in the large we need not 
only to see it for ourselves but to see it through the 
eyes of others. No matter how keen observers we may 
be there will always be much that will escape us, angles 
of vision that we have not taken. Here is where the 
novelist and the dramatist help us. To be successful in 
either field a man must be a keen student of humanity, 
otherwise he will fail to interest us and will be of no 
use to us. That is our touchstone in selecting our read- 
ing—does the man know? Is he presenting us with im- 
possible puppets or with observed characters? Can we 
learn from him? Many people are tempted to lay down 
the psychological novel as being tedious and dealing 
often with disagreeable people. From the point of view 
of the student of human nature that is a vast mistake. 
The great novelists of the immediate past—Henry James, 
Hardy, Meredith, Dostoevsky, Bourget, France, to 
mention but a few of the greatest—have much to tell 
us because they have observed with keener insight than 
we manage to do, and their art enables them to formu- 
late their knowledge in characters which make it avail- 
able for us. 


The Parish Priest 63 


- From this point of view the teaching of the novelist is 
supplemented by the vast literature of biography and 
autobiography. There you have the human document 
spread out before you with a minimum of concealment. 
What a field that is for the study of human nature! 
Especially so, I think, from the homiletic point of view. 
There are so many opportunities to study religious 
experiences directly at first hand. Where better can you 
study the problem that is always confronting and per- 
plexing the priest—the case of the boy or girl who after 
religious training abandons religion and lapses into sin 
or indifference or atheism? We meet over and over 
again the young man who goes to the university with the 
purpose of fitting himself for orders, and in a year or 
two has not only abandoned that purpose but has thrown 
over all religion. The more light we can get on the 
influence of irreligious companionship and anti-christian 
teaching the better, for it is a problem we have to deal 
with almost daily. There is small use in talking to the 
boy or girl from our point of view; we must master 
their point of view and the nature of the influences that 
are forming them. 


All that I have been saying amounts to this, which I 
started by saying, that a sermon to be effective must be 
the outcome of experience. Of course any one experi- 
ence is limited, and unless we are to preach onesidedly 
we must often go beyond our own experience. But we can 
keep as close to it as possible and never venture into 
pure theory. There are types of experience which are 
not actually ours which yet we come to understand as 
we study the experience of others. One is sometimes told 
rather sharply, ‘‘ You do not really understand what you 
are talking about when you, a celibate, undertake to 


64 The Parish Priest 


give advice to married people and to tell mothers how 
to raise their children.’? But one does not always have 
to have experience to understand it: one has to study 
it. A priest who has studied children, observed how the 
child mind works, has had experience in instructing 
them and hearing their confessions, will be in a position 
to give advice much in advance of that of the average 
parent. And as to understanding what is involved in 
the marriage relation, the celibate priest has at least 
understood it well enough to keep out of it. 

The young priest at least will be under the necessity 
of teaching and preaching many things of which his 
experience is elementary, of which there are members 
of his parish who know more than he does. He will, 
unless he be very unfortunate, find people with a prayer 
and sacramental experience that is far beyond his own. 
Yet he must speak of these things—speak with modesty 
and reserve. It is perfectly true, as some one has said, 
that the business of a priest is to preach, not to practice. 
That is to say, the priest as priest has to set forth the 
whole Christian theory and practice whether he himself 
has advanced very far in practice or not. His practice 
is the practice of a private Christian; his teaching is 
the teaching of a commissioned representative of Christ 
—and woe to him if he teach not the Gospel and the 
whole of it. He is to teach what the Catholic Church 
teaches—not so much of that teaching as he has suc- 
ceeded in putting into practice. He is not a hypocrite 
in so doing, though the gap between his preaching and 
practice will often cause him a twinge of pain. He is 
not a hypocrite because he is teaching what the Church 
sends him to teach and not something that he has found 
to be true. If in fact he has discovered it to be true, 


The Parish Priest 69 


so much the better, for there will be lacking in his teach- 
ing a certain note of reality and conviction as long as he 
is transmitting a message that he has not verified. 

Because sermons to be effective must be so largely 
the personal utterances of a certain man and the re- 
flection of his experience it is easy to understand how 
ineffective the ‘‘got up’’ sermon of necessity is. To pick 
out a subject at the last possible moment, to dig into a 
commentary or some other book for material to help 
us out, is the way to produce a sermon that will have no 
value. No doubt a preacher with what we call ‘‘a flow 
of words’’ can so prepare himself to speak for twenty 
minutes, but if there is any one in the congregation cap- 
able of thought he will see through the futile perform- 
ance. ‘The priest’s excuse that he had not time to get 
up a sermon properly is of course merely silly and an 
attempt to mask his sloth and lack of discipline. Acci- 
dents will happen, no doubt, but as a rule failure to 
prepare a sermon properly is due to misuse of time. The 
priest is bound by the conditions of his life and work to 
allot the proper amount of time to the preparation of 
his sermons, and it is an insult to his people and a con- 
tempt of his office to do otherwise. He is bound to give 
the best he can even if he is talking to a group of half 
a dozen chidren. | 

In regard to the form of the sermon opinions may 
legitimately differ. I will state my own opinion founded 
on years of experience that the spoken sermon (other 
things being equal) is far more effective than the writ- 
ten. I know that there have been great preachers who 
have read their sermons—but it takes a great preacher 
to do it: and I am still of the opinion that that same 
great preacher would have been greater still if he had 


66 The Parish Priest 


spoken his sermon. And whatever may have been the 
case in the past, in the present and in the United States 
the effect on the hearers of the spoken word is much 
greater than that of the written. Mode of delivery, no 
doubt, has something to do with it, and an effective 
method of delivery of the written sermon is possible. I 
have heard effective preachers who read their sermons— 
the late Dr. Vibbert was one; but there will always be 
something lacking in effectiveness for the ordinary au- 
dience. The psychological effect is not the same either 
on the congregation or on the preacher himself. Reading 
at the best is the delivery of an essay—the man is 
reading the production of some other man, the man of 
yesterday at least. He cannot get the same sort of 
spontaneity and verve into his address, he cannot get 
the same sort of contact with his hearers; he cannot 
react from them as the extemporary speaker can. The 
man who is speaking without notes can react continually 
from his congregation and can create and play upon 
their moods. 

Naturally, the extemporary sermon is not less, but 
more, prepared. It is an easy business to write out a 
twenty minute address compared with the work of get- 
ting fixed in one’s mind a well thought out outline which 
is never completely fixed but is continually modified 
as one goes along. The effective preacher without notes: 
has a hard job but it is one that pays. 

The greatest danger of the preacher is that of sloth, 
which prevents him adequately from preparing his ser- 
mon. He is apt to presume upon his fluency or his 
experience or even upon his reputation. We have all 
known distinguished preachers who failed badly on oc- 
casion, obviously because they had not worked. The 


The Parish Priest 67 


next greatest danger is, no doubt, the desire for popu- 
larity and success. To draw a crowd is not necessarily 
success. Anyone with a small amount of brains can get 
a crowd for a time at least—witness the success of 
certain recent attempts in that line. The late Bishop 
Williams of Connecticut used to tell us that any of us 
could easily crowd our church on a Sunday morning by 
sitting on the edge of the pulpit attired in a suit of red 
underclothes. There is no virtue in a crowd as such. 
It gives you an opportunity? But if you make use of the 
opportunity to present the Catholic faith you will sadly 
disappoint the crowd and they will not come again. 
But aside from crowd seeking, the priest may seek 
popularity by preaching what the people want and not 
what they need. To play to the gallery, to avoid un- 
popular doctrines, to speak on harmless topics of the 
day, to align oneself with popular movements, is no doubt 
the road to a certain sort of popularity, but it is also 
to prostitute one’s office and to turn away from the work 
one was ordained to do. We were ordained to preach 
the Catholic religion and the Catholic religion always 
has been and always will be an unpopular religion. It 
makes vast demands on men; demands for obedience 
and sacrifices of all sorts; and men do not readily give 
themselves to these things. It is a stern religion requir- 
ing of the preacher plain speaking on matters which cut 
into men’s daily lives. It is easy to speak plainly of 
the faults of Jacob and of the infidelity of the Children 
of Israel; but it is less easy to speak of gambling when 
you know what went on at Mrs. X’s party, or of the 
iniquities which take place at the country club. It is 
easy to lapse into generalities and platitudes. But to 
what end is colorless preaching? It would be better to 


68 The Parish Priest 


omit the sermon altogether. ‘‘That sort of preaching,’’ 
the warden said, ‘‘will end by driving all the rich out 
of the parish.’’ Well, one cannot afford to sell one’s 
soul to the devil even to keep up the finances of a 
parish. 

In the end the priest can only say with the Apostles: 
‘‘Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken 
unto you more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot 
but speak the things that we have seen and heard.’’ 


CHAPTER V 
Typrs oF SERMON 


As the priest works out his experience as a preacher 
he will gradually settle upon the form of the presenta- 
tion of his subject that he finds most suitable to him. I do 
not think that anyone can teach him this, for a sermon 
of any worth is a mode of self-expression. There are 
certain ways in which I can put truth forcibly which 
are natural to me: this I must find out. I may, to be 
sure, just speak naturally in the way best for me without 
having reflected upon the matter; but more commonly 
it will be true that I need to reflect and study. A 
sermon is neither an essay nor an oration but a distinct 
mode of intellectual expression; it is the presentation of 
some fact or truth or practice of the Christian religion 
in terms of the preacher’s experience. It will therefore 
be a wholly personal mode of expression, will be colored 
by the personality of the preacher. Instructors in homi- 
letics often insist that the preacher shall study to 
eliminate from his mode of address personal peculiarities. 
That, I think, is mistaken advice. No doubt he will do 
well to eliminate merely queer tricks and odd actions; 
but it will be a mistake to adopt a standardized mode 
of delivery and gesture. One’s gestures, for example, 
should be perfectly natural and not studied, not the 
product of the theories of elocution teachers. There is 
a story of someone’s finding a manuscript of a sermon 
that a preacher had left in a car (let us hope after he had 
used it). In it were carefully introduced instructions 
as to the gestures to be used; something of this sort in 
the way of rubrics—‘‘Here pause and wave the right 


70 The Parish Priest 


hand in a gesture of despair’’; ‘‘At this point look 
about with an expression of contempt.’’? That sort of 
thing is not preaching the Christian religion. It may 
very well be that one’s gestures are awkward, but if they 
are one’s own they are likely to be more expressive than 
if they are studied and artificial gestures. So, too, every 
man has a way of saying what he has to say that is 
natural to him; he had better stick to that way. A con- 
gregation soon gets used to a natural mode of expression 
however unusual, and feels that it expresses the man. 
Of course if they do not respect the man and what 
he says, the form of his expression, however perfect, 
will not help the situation. 

In his process of finding himself as a preacher the 
young priest will do well to study the sermons of other 
preachers. I do not mean that he should take up the 
history of homiletics, for the preaching of one century, 
however effective in its time, will not be effective in 
another. From a literary point of view preaching 
reached its high-water mark in the seventeenth century. 
Bossuet, Bourdaloue and Massillon in France; Andrewes, 
Jeremy Taylor, South and Tillotson in England, were 
masters of the art. But it is a form of art that is now 
antique. Dr. South preaching three hours is inconceiv- 
able to-day; nor can we imagine a modern preacher at 
the end of an hour holding up an exhausted hour glass, 
and being greeted with cries of ‘‘go on, go on,’’ and 
then turning the glass over for another hour of preach- 
ing. And yet their sermons are masterpieces of what 
was once called ‘‘pulpit eloquence.’’ They are without 
doubt better sermons than most of those preached to-day 
and well repay careful study; naturally, not with a view 
to copying the method, but to understand how truth 


The Parish Priest cai 


may be developed and effectively presented. The rhet- 
oric of Bossuet, the learning of Andrewes, even the 
matchless style of Taylor would to-day be thrown away, 
and yet the preacher of to-day can learn much from the 
masters of the past. 

Still, unless he is making a profound study of the art, 
the preacher will gain more help from the preachers of 
his own time. Our intellectual environment changes 
very rapidly and our modes of effective expression and 
presentation of truth vary with it. I am inclined to 
think that even so recent preachers as Newman and 
Liddon have passed as effective models. I remember 
a priest telling me that he had preached every one of 
Liddon’s sermons, and feeling rather glad that I had not 
had to listen to him. So far as my own experience in 
the study of sermons goes [ should have no hesitation in 
saying that by far the most effective preacher of the last 
generation was Scott Holland. For depth of under- 
standing, for keenness of thought, for originality and 
effectiveness of expression, I do not know of anyone who 
can approach him. His sermons have this advantage for 
the study of the young priest, that while they are vastly 
stimulating to thought they are quite impossible of 
imitation. 

Speaking of imitation raises the question—What is 
plagiarism? How great a sin, or if not a sin, an offence 
against the proprieties, is it? It is no doubt quite ill- 
advised (to put it mildly) to read another man’s sermon 
and leave the congregation with the impression that it is 
one’s own. I remember one young man who achieved 
a great reputation as a preacher by the process of memo- 
rizing the sermons of Bishop Brooks and delivering them 
without any explanation as to their origin. That was no 


Fy. The Parish Priest 


doubt wrong; but it might be said in partial defence 
that he must have worked harder to get up the sermons 
than the average preacher does to get up original ones. 
We are not all geniuses, and perhaps it would be a re- 
lief to some congregations if a priest were to say frankly 
that he was going to use any homiletic material that he 
thought effective, and having thus cleared his conscience, 
go on to use the sermons of others. If he can do this 
effectively beyond what he himself can do, this might 
very well be excused. Indeed I am inclined to recom- 
mend such a method to the young priest who has to 
preach twice a day on Sundays. I have a vague memory 
of some learned and pessimistic persons who said that 
a scholar could write one sermon a week and a fool 
two. I wonder what would have been his judgment on 
the work of a priest who has to produce six or eight 
addresses of some sort in the course of seven days. 

I do not believe that the borrowing of thought or il- 
lustration from others can be considered plagiarism. 
Very few people have original thoughts: all our thoughts 
are borrowed. What is called original thought is only a 
new combination of old thoughts; and the whole process 
of education is a process of the accumulation and as- 
similation of other men’s thoughts. After we have — 
accumulated them we can go on to work them over 
and newly combine them for our own immediate use. We 
study books to find out what others have thought and we 
call them our masters. We study the Bible to assimilate 
the teachings of inspired writers. We study the works 
of theologians and spiritual writers to ‘‘make their 
thoughts our own.’’ Just where are we to draw the 
line between legitimate and illegitimate borrowing? 
There is, in fact, no such line. I feel that I have made a 


The Parish Priest 73 


thought my own if I have in such wise mastered it that 
I do not merely quote it but reproduce it in my own 
terms. It seems to me legitimate to take a starting 
point from other men’s sermons and then to work out 
on my own lines. 

As I have indicated, there are various types of ser- 
mons one or the other of which will in the end be found 
congenial to the individual preacher. I do not mean 
that after experiment he will confine himself to that type, 
but that it will be the type that he will habitually use. 
A type which was much in favor in the past, but which, 
IT imagine, is less so at present, is the expository sermon— 
the sermon which concerns itself with elaborate exposi- 
tion of a single passage of Scripture. A large collection 
of such sermons, some of them very wonderful indeed, 
is found in the Expositor’s Bible and also in the Pulpit 
Commentary, both of which had a large circulation a 
generation ago, and I fancy are still in wide use. Such 
sermons are formal expositions of the Bible. Historically, 
this is the meaning of the sermon. It was an exposition 
of the Eucharistic Scriptures. Its place in the Mass 
still indicates this; and I think that there is no formal 
direction for a sermon other than in connection with 
the Mass. That the sermon was primarily an exposition 
is further evidenced by the surviving custom of ‘‘taking 
a text’’? though the sermon that follows may have no 
vital connection with it. 

To-day, I think, the strictly expository sermon is be- 
coming unusual, in the Anglican Communion, at least. 
In that blessed era when the people were interested in 
a sermon as such, and spontaneously kept awake during 
it, a formal exposition of Scripture might be used with 
success. But to-day, I fear, there are very few of us 


74 The Parish Priest 


who are skilled enough expositors to hold the attention 
of a congregation. For one thing the interest in and 
reverence for Scripture has greatly declined. We listen 
with little of the awe and reverence with which one 
receives a divine message. The person who listens to the 
Bible as the Word of God and is therefore eager to 
know what it means is rare. One consequence of our 
changed attitude is that our exposition of Scripture 
has largely degenerated into a defence of Scripture— 
into apologetics, in other words. To the modern Ameri- | 
can congregation, ‘‘Thus saith the Lord,’’ has ceased to 
earry conviction. It is not so much that they disbelieve 
as that they are indifferent—the authority of the Bible, 
like all other authority, has passed out of their horizon. 
I do not mean that the expository sermon has become 
impossible, but that because of the changed intellectual 
atmosphere it has become difficult as an art. Add to 
this that the clergy are trained in Biblical criticism 
rather than in Biblical religion, trained to approach 
Scripture as critics rather than as expositors, and you 
have the problem still further complicated. I confess 
that the expository sermon has never ‘‘found’’ me, I 
have known only one really good expositor—the late 
Bishop Grafton. Under present conditions I am inclined 
to think that pure exposition is best relegated to the 
Bible class. ; 

Is it also true, as is so often and so positively as- 
serted, that the dogmatic sermon belongs to the past, 
and is at present an ineffective instrument more likely 
to empty a church than to fillit? It is no doubt true that 
the revolt against authority of all sorts which has been 
increasing for the last century has been directed in a 
special way against authority in religion. Dogmatism 


The Parish Priest 15 


and authority have been so persistently denounced by 
those who have voted themselves into the position of 
our intellectual guides that the popular mind has be- 
come thoroughly saturated with anti-dogmatic termi- 
nology. To-day, freedom of thought does not mean 
freedom to think if you are able to think, which no one 
can or ever has been able to prevent, but it is taken 
to mean freedom to teach any sort of doctrine that you 
like without reference to the consequences. The logical 
outcome of course is the anarchistic one—freedom to act 
as you like. If any one may teach anything he likes it is 
certainly involved in this freedom that any one may 
practice what is taught, and indeed may practice any- 
thing that he thinks is desirable. I do not see why the 
graduates of a University where freedom of teaching 
is proclaimed and demanded by the faculty should be 
criticized for acting in any way they see fit. But how- 
ever that may be, the upshot of the theory of freedom 
of which we to-day are the victims is that dogma and 
dogmatism have got a bad name, and there is an in- 
stinctive revolt from the mention of dogmatic teaching. 

However, this is really not very deep so far as the 
mass of the people is concerned. They have caught the 
intellectual pose and highbrow slang about dogma, but 
they do not mean anything by it. They have no real 
objection to dogmatic preaching—in fact they rather 
like it. It is still true of the average man that when he 
goes to church he wants to hear about religion. Of 
course there are exceptions. I remember a man who went 
pretty regularly to a certain church on Sunday evenings 
who, when a friend expressed surprise at seeing him 
there, said: ‘‘O, I like to hear Mr. X preach. He is not 
always preaching about his religion.’’? But that, I fancy, 


76 The Parish Priest 


was exceptional. People still go to church to hear about 
religion. They will, to be sure, go to hear attacks upon 
religion, but they will not long go to hear the same sort 
of attack. Entertainments of a sort and attacks on reli- 
gion may have a certain succés de scandale, but only the 
positive will hold the same congregation. And the posi- 
tive is the dogmatic. People may not believe what you 
believe, but they expect you to believe something and 
they respect you if you do. At bottom people have 
only contempt for a man who is continually attacking © 
the Church to which he belongs. They enjoy a straight- 
out statement of doctrine. What liberalism has done is 
not to take away the taste for dogma but to implant 
the conviction that no one is under obligation to believe 
it. To-day the man in the pew—or the child for that 
matter—feels perfectly competent to say, ‘‘I do not 
believe that,’’ or ‘‘I do not at all agree with what the 
preacher said.’’ Children are brought up with that con- 
ception of self-determination. I recall a small boy who 
was sent to me to be prepared for confirmation whose 
mother told him: ‘‘It is all right for the rector to 
teach you these things, but of course you do not have to 
do them.’’ We get quite used to the man who has spent 
no time in the study of a subject over which we have 
spent years, and who knows more about it than we do. 
Yet I suppose the same man would deny the doctrine of 
inspiration. 

But to return to my point: people do not object to 
dogma; they at times object to the manner in which it 
is presented. The preacher will therefore do well to 
pay careful attention to the time and mode of dogmatic 
teaching. He has not to decide between dogma and 
no dogma, but to study as to timeliness and manner of 


The Parish Priest 17 


presentation. As to timeliness, our impulse is to say, 
‘‘the sooner the better; if a doctrine is a doctrine of 
the Church, go ahead and teach it.’’ That is however 
an immature attitude. On the other extreme we have 
what we might perhaps characterize as the over-ripe 
attitude—the attitude of the man who spends his life 
preparing for something he never does. ‘‘I don’t think | 
my people are yet ready for that,’’ he says. One never 
likes to ask: ‘‘When will they be?’’ 

What I mean by the preparation of a parish for 
certain teaching is the making sure that they have so 
far assimilated preceding teaching that prepares the 
way for the new step, that one can profitably go on. 
I say profitably, not safely, for I am not advocating a 
safety first religion. There are doctrines in religion that 
are fundamental, and others that rise on them as their 
foundation. Obviously, the doctrine of the Trinity has 
to be assimilated before the doctrine of the Incarnation 
can be taken in. It is only when the Incarnation has 
become fixed in the mind that the extension of the 
Incarnation in the Church and sacraments can be under- 
stood. It is on the dogmatic structure of the creed 
that the further extensions of dogmatic theology can be 
made. The young priest who in a Middle West parish 
where dogmatic Christianity was unknown began his 
teaching with the Immaculate Conception, quite naturally 
failed to make a favorable impression. A young priest 
will first of all find out how much he can take for granted 
in the religion of his parish; how much teaching of the 
fundamentals of the creeds they need; and if they are 
fairly well instructed in these matters he can go on to 
more developed teaching in matters of doctrine and 
practice. There is a logigal order in Catholic dogmatics 


6B The Parish Priest 


and it is as well to follow this closely, for then the full 
acceptance of Catholic dogmaties is greatly facilitated. 

Also a congregation’s acceptance is greatly facili- 
tated by the mode of the presentation of a subject. A 
dogmatic sermon will do well to avoid as far as possible 
a dogmatic manner. The two do not necessarily go 
together. There are dogmatic preachers who have the 
manner of cramming dogmas down our throat in a raw 
state—who seem to say: ‘‘This is the Catholic religion, 
accept it or go to hell.’’? That may be the alternative, 
but it is not the best way to put it. The average Ameri- 
can likes to be treated as a rational being; possibly 
he is mistaken about himself, but it is not worth while 
to raise the issue. State dogmatic truth in the form of 
an easily followed argument and give the man the im- 
pression that he is being appealed to as an intellectual 
being, and his prejudices will be removed and there will 
be no obstacle to his going on to the desired end. Be 
as simple as the subject permits; be perfectly clear; 
start as far as may be from a point of agreement; and 
there will be little difficulty in carrying a congregation 
with you. 

What one needs to feel is that one has no choice but 
to teach dogma. The Catholic religion is a dogmatic 
religion and we have no choice but to teach it in its 
full meaning. No consideration of popularity or diffi- 
culty can hold us back from our necessary work. The 
only questions are those raised above—the questions of 
when and how. To fulfil our duty properly we need to 
study with great care methods of presentation. What 
would seem to me the vital point in method is the 
ability to carry dogma on into life. What people mean 
by a ‘‘barren dogma’? is one of which they see no use— 


The Parish Priest 719 


no application to the daily life. Much dogmatic preach- 
ing leaves the dogma hanging in the air, and the hearer 
goes away with the feeling that he has learned ‘‘nothing 
practical.’? That feeling is quite legitimate under the 
circumstances: he ought to have learned something 
practical, he ought to have learned how belief—this 
special belief that he has been hearing about—affects 
life. The intent of any sermon is to teach men action— 
to move them to do something. If they cannot find it 
in a sermon it is because they have not been listening 
to a sermon but an essay of some sort. The Catholic 
religion is not a philosophy, but a map of life, a guide 
to action. 

What I have said about dogmatic teaching covers 
dogmatic morals as well as dogmatic theology. From 
a certain angle perhaps dogmatic morals is as much 
needed today as dogmatic theology. People have so 
little conception of obligatory morals. It is a strange 
comment on the result of some centuries of practical 
abandonment of dogmatic theology in any full sense by 
the pulpit, and the supposed concentration on conduct in 
preaching, that the conception of an obligatory conduct 
has slipped through our fingers. Probably the instincts 
of the natural man are keener than his brains, and 
while he has been told that he does not need dogma in 
order to have a true and effective religion, he was 
quietly making the inference that if he could believe 
what he liked and still be a good Christian, the same 
principle must apply to conduct. At any rate he has 
acted as though he had made the inference, and has 
selected his morals as he was told that he might select 
his creed. 


80 The Parish Priest 


Therefore the dogmatic preacher will not neglect to 
make it plain to his hearer that there flows from the 
Christian system a certain type of conduct which in many 
respects differs from the hereditary customs and group- 
morals which to him have represented right conduct. He 
must be made to understand that the meaning of moral 
conduct as he has understood it is constantly changing 
with the changing conditions of society. If he is a man 
of middle life or more he will easily see that the moral 
standards which prevailed when he was educated have 
to-day largely given place to others. And he must be 
taught that there are certain moral principles which be- 
long to the Christian religion and are therefore fixed, 
and that the application of those principles to life re- 
sults in the formation of a character of a distinct type— 
the Christian type. To make men understand and act 
upon this is vastly more difficult than to get them to 
accept Catholic dogma. But I repeat, the two things 
must be built up, their interdependence shown. It must 
be made perfectly clear that the Catholic Christian is 
not a man who believes certain things, but a man who 
because he believes certain things acts in a certain way 
as the outcome of that belief. 

There is another type of sermon which I am inclined 
to dismiss rather briefly—the hortatory sermon. In the 
ordinary acceptance of that term it is a sermon that 
consists of exhortation to be good. I should be inclined 
to call it the hot-air type. It is largely compounded of 
commonplaces and platitudes—a maximum of noise and 
sentimentality with a minimum of meaning. A whole 
sermon given to exhortation seems to me pointless. A 
successful sermon will always have a greater or less 
hortatory element, but the exhortation will grow out 


The Parish Priest 81 


of the dogmatic content and will be the application of 
that to life. In this sense the hortatory element in a 
sermon is indispensable and may be as vivid as you 
please. It isa direct appeal to the emotions—the element 
in our nature that stirs the will to action. A man may 
very well be convinced of the rightness of action implied 
in a given dogmatic teaching, and that he personally 
ought to act in a certain way—and yet not act. Many 
no doubt are convinced by dogmatic teaching of the 
priest’s power to forgive sin, and of the desirableness 
of their going to confession; but they do not go. That 
they should go there needs beside the intellectual con- 
viction the emotional impulse. This the hortatory ele- 
ment in a sermon should give; and a sermon on the 
doctrine of confession ought to contain just that emo- 
tional element which will bring a man to repentence and 
confession, will bring him to his knees before his Re- 
deemer. Exhortation is to action, and you cannot 
profitably exhort people to action unless you have given 
them adequate grounds for action, and these of a quite 
definite sort. 

There is what may be distinguished as a separate type 
of sermon though I do not find it noted as such. I 
should call it the spiritually constructive sermon. The 
life of the Christian is not just the ordinary life of the 
world with the addition of certain special beliefs and 
certain habits which are peculiar to the Christian. Critics 
of Christianity say: ‘‘I do not see but you Christians 
are just like other people.’’ That is a very severe criti- 
cism, and if it be true that there is nothing distinctive 
about a Christian but that he attends certain services 

there must be something radically wrong with his 
religion. Certainly our Lord did not live and die to pro- 


82 The Parish Priest 


duce so banal a result as that. The Christian is a 
supernatural person living a supernatural life which is 
based on certain quite definite principles ultimately 
derived from the teaching of our Lord. In theory this 
life which is begun in baptism goes on to expand into 
the life of sanctity. A Christian then is a person of 
growing sanctity. The process of this growth is gov- 
erned by certain laws, the laws of the spiritual life; 
and much of the preaching and instruction of the 
Catholic parish needs to be directed to the exposition of — 
those laws of spiritual growth. Such preaching has 
back of it the dogmatic system of the Church; it has in 
view the ordering of the moral action of the Christian; 
but it is especially concerned with the forwarding of 
the spiritual development of the individual. Its em- 
phasis is therefore on the details of spiritual living, tak- 
ing rather for granted a right belief and correct moral 
living. It will emphasize positive action—prayer in its 
various forms, the sacraments and their place in life, 
the nature and value of self-discipline, the means of 
sanctification. 

Here is a very wide field for preaching and a very 
rich one. I think I may add that if it is tilled with com- 
petent knowledge it is the most attractive one. People 
are in fact drawn to a religion of positive action which 
asks them not only to think about something and to 
avoid certain things, but puts them on the road to accom- 
plishment. They love the varied life of a Catholic parish, 
with its continual round of services supplemented by 
its varied devotions. It is a natural human desire to 
want to take part in a devotion and not to be a mere 
looker on: participation gives outlet to energy. People 
feel suppressed if they are just spectators. Hence the 


The Parish Priest 83 


preaching which opens the way to action is attractive. 
It is needless to say that such preaching must be fol- 
lowed by abundant provision for action. 

The sermon that is spiritually constructive is con- 
cerned with the progress of the soul in the way of salva- 
tion. It insists on a growing life. It may not—probably, 
except under special circumstances, it will not—concern 
itself with the technicalities of the threefold way. But 
the preacher will have those technicalities in mind and 
they will control the matter of his preaching. He un- 
derstands that spiritual progress is as orderly as any 
other progress and that there are no short cuts to 
sanctity. Whether a soul has ever heard of the threefold 
way or not, it must in fact follow it if it is to arrive 
at sanctity. And the end of our preaching is to direct 
souls to sanctity. Men are called to be saints, and not to 
be some colorless compromise—some amalgam of religion 
and worldliness. The preacher cannot permit that they 
forget this. The average Christian would be content 
with a very small modicum of religion mixed with a 
very large amount of worldliness. It must not be per- 
mitted that that pass for the religion of Christ. Too 
long have we suffered from compromises and reduced 
Christianity—so far reduced that it needs a chemical 
analysis to find it. It is infidelity to our mission, to our 
Saviour, to be assenting to such a degradation of the 
Christian ideal. We must hold high the standard of the 
Christian life and insist that the consistent Christian 
is the one who is faring forward toward the goal. We 
must get rid of the ideals of mere human goodness 
and respectability, and hold to the ideal of holiness— 
of that holiness without which no man can see the Lord. 


CHAPTER VI 
Tue TECHNIQUE OF THE SERMON 


A Ggoop sermon is a sermon which accomplishes its end, 
whatever may be its defects from an ideal point of 
view. Yet it is no doubt true that the structure of a 
sermon, other things being equal, contributes to its suc- 
cess. I do not discuss the written sermon, because I do 
not believe that the written sermon, except in rare in- 
stances, can hope for much success in influencing an 
American congregation. A written sermon may be a 
very perfect composition from the literary point of view, 
and yet not produce the effect that will be produced by 
an ill-arranged and badly connected talk which is driven 
home by the earnestness of the speaker. In reality it 
is the man who impresses, and his personality is more 
powerful than his words, or rather his words get their 
driving force from his personality. 

However, I am not pleading for disorder in a sermon 
as superior to order, or for a disregard of technique. 
There are certain simple rules which help to make the 
sermon successful, and which while they are not to be 
regarded as laws which it is a sin to depart from, the 
preacher would do well to observe. It is a decided step 
towards success if the sermon makes a good start. 1} 
do not mean a sensational start. The trouble with all 
sorts of sensationalism is that it speedily loses its force. 
It will not stand repetition. As someone has said, ‘‘If 
you beat one drum to-day to get a crowd, you will have 
to beat two tomorrow.’’ The struggles of the sensational 
Protestant minister in trying to find a new attraction 
are rather futile. Even a new heresy has but a limited 


The Parish Priest 85 


driving power. By a good start, therefore, I do not 
mean a start that will startle, but one that will catch 
the attention. This can be done occasionally by the 
novelty of the text, but this again is a novelty that 
easily passes into a weariness. If the congregation gets 
to thinking what queer text they will have to-day, their 
interest will soon be limited to the text unless there is 
unusual power in following it up. 

The opening paragraph of a sermon should be brief 
and calculated to catch the attention, not so much for 
itself as for the promise of something to follow. The 
first sentence should catch the attention. The sort of 
sermon that starts with a long exposition of the text 
has a very good chance of failing to grasp the attention, 
and after the attention has once been lost it is difficult 
to get hold of it. 

The young preacher is apt to fall back upon his 
seminary studies, especially if he be something of a 
student, and to indulge himself in some remarks on 
the meaning of ‘‘the original,’’ or the sketch of some 
Biblical situation. This will be a peculiar danger. If 
he has been led to study the sermons of the great English 
preachers of the last generation he will forget that their 
sermons were written and approached their subject with 
a sense of literary form and of leisurely production. 
They are not seemingly an attempt to drive home in 
twenty minutes a practical human lesson that moves men 
to action. We may admire their method, but it will 
not do for us. We may study them to advantage because 
their matter will prove educative and suggestive. But 
for ourselves we will do better to get into our subject 
right away, with as few words of introduction as possible, 
and those chosen with a view to arousing the interest 


86 The Parish Priest 


of a group of people who after all have, most of them, 
come to church this morning because they feel it is their 
duty to do so and not because they are terribly inter- 
ested in what the preacher is going to say. 

That is a fact that the preacher has always to take 
into consideration, that his ordinary morning and even- 
ing congregations do not come in a state of expectancy 
to listen to him. They are there for a variety of reasons: 
habit, sense of duty, social convention, to hear the music, 
and so forth. Those who are more devout have come © 
to offer an act of worship to Almighty God and to make 
intercession for themselves and others. Rarely have they 
come with any eager looking forword to spiritual in- 
struction or inspiration. It is somewhat different in the 
case of congregations gathered together on special days 
and for special occasions. Then the priest can assume 
an interest in the meaning of the day and service and 
can speak on a different note. But ordinarily he must 
assume that it is his business to create and sustain in- 
terest and must construct his sermon with that end in 
view. In the preparation and shaping of his sermon 
he must see a given congregation and given circum- 
stances. He is not writing an essay which aims at 
literary perfection, or stating a subject for himself to 
see if his thought upon it is clear. He is aiming to 
convey certain instruction to a miscellaneous gathering 
of people, and to convey it in such ways that they 
will be stirred to action. He is aiming not only to en- 
lighten the understanding, but to stimulate the will. 

The first step, then, is to gain the attention at the 
outset and to gain it for the subject in hand. A mere 
oddity or eccentricity at the start will not do this, 
unless it be relevant to what follows. If a startling 


The Parish Priest 87 


opening is followed by a dull development then interest 
speedily evaporates. I do not think it is superfluous 
to say here that in order to sustain interest in any 
subject the preacher himself must be interested. I fancy 
it is rather a common experience to listen to sermons 
in which the preacher seems at least to be uninterested— 
to be in fact horribly bored; the inevitable consequence 
is that he is boring his hearers. This may be due to 
the lack of any vocation to preach, or it may be due to 
imperfect preparation. Whatever it is due to, the fact 
is only too obvious, in many cases. 

Let us assume, then, that the attention is caught and 
that one is going on to unfold one’s subject. It must be 
unfolded in constant contact with the minds whose at- 
tention is aroused. I do not at all mean by that that 
the truths which it is sought to impart must be lowered 
to the level of the average understanding of the con- 
gregation. Unless the preacher is seeking to carry his 
congregation on there is no point to his preaching. This 
is the failure of charlatanism and sensationalism alike; 
they produce a momentary excitement without either 
intellectual enlightenment or stimulus to the will. A 
sermon should appeal first of all to the intelligence, and 
to do this effectively it must present truth so that it 
may be intellectually grasped. This can be done with 
any truth. The most abstruse dogmas can be so pre- 
sented that an intellectual hold of them—lI do not say 
and exhaustive understanding of them—can be obtained 
by achild. This of course means clearness and simplicity 
of statement, with direct and practical application. It 
is fatal for the preacher to confine himself to what 
people know. His business is to educate. 


88 The Parish Priest 


Taking into account the intellectual attainments of 
the average congregation one should not hesitate to 
repeat a good deal. To state a difficult truth over in a 
number of ways in the course of one’s exposition is not 
at all a bad thing. One may think that one is repeating 
oneself, but there will be few in the congregation who 
will note it unless it is very awkwardly done. It is 
necessary, too, to explain terms which seem to us plain 
and commonplace. We have to do with men and women 
who for the most part have had only a common school 
education. Even if they have had a college education it 
is fairly safe to assume that they are utterly ignorant 
of the vocabulary of Christianity. Neither is it safe to 
assume—though one need not be vocal about this— 
that one’s predecessors in the pulpit have trained the 
minds of the congregation to an appreciation of the 
meaning of Christian terminology. One is sometimes 
astounded to find out that even those who have been 
constant attendants at church from childhood have never 
understood the commonest words in the Christian vo- 
cabulary. I recall that some years ago I employed as 
a stenographer a young woman who had a High School 
education and from childhood had been regular in her 
attendance in Sunday School and at Mass in a High 
Church parish. JI was astounded to find when she re- 
turned the manuscript at my dictation that even such 
common words as Incarnation and Atonement had never 
had any meaning attached to them, or if they had it was 
an entirely alien meaning. An ordinary stenographer 
is quite helpless before a religious address; witness the 
weird reports of sermons which appear in the news- 
papers. I once employed a court stenographer to take 
down the meditations of a Retreat I was giving. He 


The Parish Priest 89 


gave up after the first meditation. I asked if my speed 
were too great. ‘‘No, not at all, it was quite easy’’— 
but he could not make anything out of what I said. 

It is a common mistake to attempt too much with 
one sermon. I am quite certain that my first sermon 
was a condensed presentation of the whole Christian 
religion. I never heard that it produced much effect. 
A sermon which attempts too much will most likely 
either lack clearness or will be merely sketchy. In either 
case it produces no effect. With twenty minutes, or 
at most half an hour at one’s disposal, if one succeed 
in clear detailed development of a single truth with 
proper illustration and application, one will have done 
very well. The subjects are big: yes, and therefore they 
have to be taken piecemeal. One sermon has to supple- 
ment and complete another. You cannot treat the sub- 
ject of the Eucharist or the Holy Spirit in a single 
sermon. Define, therefore, what aspect of truth you are 
going to deal with and make at least that aspect clear 
and useful. | 

To the effective presentation of truth illustration is 
a great help. Effective illustration is a fine art. It is 
quite easy to overdo the matter, for one thing. There 
are styles that are so filled with illustration, allusions, 
analogies and the like that the thread and continuity of 
the thought are broken and obscured. One cannot see 
the wood for the trees. The mere interjection of a 
story may relieve the strain and recall the attention 
of a bored congregation for a moment, but the telling 
of stories is rather a hazardous business from the point 
of view of the ultimate aim of the sermon. It is not 
always and everywhere that one can find a story that has 
homiletic effectiveness. The most useless books on my 


90) The Parish Priest 


library shelves are the dictionaries of anecdotes. It is 
very difficult to inject an anecdote into a sermon in such 
wise that it seems to grow out of the subject. Commonly 
it has the appearance of a splash of crude paint on a 
surface of another color, or a patch of new cloth on an 
old garment. <A story to be worth telling must be 
worth it, not in itself, but in the particular place where 
it is told. 

Yet the story which is in place is extremely effective. 
You have only to study our Lord’s method of illustration 
to understand how effective. Our Lord knew how and 
where to tell a story. One may perhaps know when 
but not know how. It is no easy matter to tell a story 
effectively. Even in private life a good story teller is 
rare. How often do we listen to someone trying to 
tell a really good story and utterly ruining its point 
and effect by the manner of telling! Often, too, no 
doubt, we have heard a preacher attempt an illustration 
and fail of his effect through sheer inability to handle 
his matter. A long story or illustration in particular 
requires great skill in presentation. 

IT am not saying all this from any opposition or dis- 
like of stories and illustrations. On the contrary, I feel 
that commonly we make too little use of them. I am 
only warning of certain sorts of dangers. In fact, I 
think we give in the preparation of sermons too little 
attention to effective illustration, perhaps just because 
we find illustrations so difficult to handle. We think out 
what we have to say and pay attention to its effective 
arrangement, but when it comes to illustration nothing 
occurs to us and we have too much experience of the 
futility of hunting through books for help to encourage 
us to try again. If nothing spontaneously occurs to us 
we do not bother. 


The Parish Priest 91 


But as a sermon is at once a work of art and an at- 
tempt at the persuasive presentation of truth, it is worth 
while to bother. We are under obligation to take all 
the pains we can in our sermon construction. If we do 
not feel obliged to be the best preachers we can be we 
ought not to preach at all. We cannot well practice 
an art that we have not studied and do not constantly 
study. The whole matter of illustration therefore is 
not a matter of small importance, but one that demands 
our best attention. It requires time, no doubt, but it 
is time rightly required of us as priests. It is not of 
the essence of our vocation to be scout masters or en- 
tertainers at afternoon tea; it is of the essence that we 
preach the Gospel effectively. 

I am inclined to start from this, that an illustration 
to be effective must be effective to me. I must feel its 
effectiveness. If it does not affect me it is unlikely 
that it will affect anyone through me. It may be a 
good illustration for someone else to use, but I cannot 
well use it. Therefore I should say that instead of 
buying dictionaries of anecdotes or subscribing for homi- 
letic reviews I should set to work to make a collection 
of illustrations, illustrations that I have gathered 
because they are effective to me. 

The keeping of note-books is an essential part of the 
business of teacher and preacher. Sir William Osler, 
one of the leading lights of the medical profession of 
the last generation, was wont to insist strongly on the 
indispensable work of taking notes. He says, ‘‘Given 
the sacred hunger and proper preliminary training, the 
student-practitioner requires at least three things with 
which to stimulate and maintain his education: a note 
book, a library and a quinquennial brain-dusting. I 


92 The Parish Priest 


wish I had time to speak of the value of note-taking; 
you can do nothing as a student in practice without it.’’ 
What Osler preached he practiced, and what is of value 
to the medical student in this matter is of fully as 
much value to the preacher and teacher. <A great 
element making for his success will be to read with a 
note book at hand into which are constantly noted down 
thoughts, illustrations and suggestions which promise 
to be of later use. We note these illustrations because 
they throw light upon this or that theme, help us to — 
make clear our thought upon it. Such illustrations 
roughly jotted down can later be classified and indexed. 

What seems to me the best way of keeping all 
notes accessible is to index them in a loose-leaf system 
so that what has been used can be removed and thus 
our indexes are prevented from getting clogged. Un- 
less carefully indexed our accumulated material will soon 
get so out of hand that the work of finding what we 
want will exceed the use of it when found, and we shall 
abandon it altogether. On the other hand, a carefully 
kept set of notes condenses our reading and keeps it 
available. Desultory reading is rather a brain clog than 
a brain stimulus. I am tempted to quote again from 
Sir William Osler: ‘‘For the general practitioner a 
well used library is one of the few correctives of the 
premature senility which is so apt to overtake him. 
Self-centered, self-taught, he leads a solitary life and 
unless his everyday experience is controlled by careful 
FEARING eh as eek: it soon ceases to be of the slightest 
value, and becomes a mere accretion of isolated facts 
without correlation.’’ 

What I am recommending is not the mere collection 
of anecdotes, but a broader thing—the collection of 


The Parish Priest 93 


illustrative material. It is only occasionally that the 
story will be of use. But there are many other methods 
of illustration. Illustrations drawn from the natural 
world are of great use in enforcing moral and spiritual ’ 
lessons, and a priests’ reading should be broad enough 
to enable him frequently to draw his illustrations from 
this source. <A verse of poetry will often put a truth 
picturesquely and forcibly and will sum up in a few words 
what one has been expounding. <A character in a novel 
or a play can often be used to illustrate a principle. 
If the novel or the play be well known to one’s hearers 
so much the better. 

The injection of an element of humor into the sermon 
is often a saving element. The average human being is 
not a good listener and he is not terribly interested in 
spiritual matters. He assumes that he has a soul, and 
that his soul is immortal, and that these facts ought to 
carry with them a certain interest in the future and 
in spiritual things here and now. But he has a hard 
time in arousing himself to any enthusiasm about the 
matter. He is convinced that he ought to go through a 
certain routine which the Church recommends, but he 
does not go about it very zealously. He listens to ser- 
mons, but the interest he has in them is languid, and 
if obviously the interest of the preacher in what he is 
saying is also languid, the end is mutual boredom. If, 
on the other hand, the preacher is interested he will 
interest his hearer. His enthusiasm will be, as we say, 
catching. And if he has the gift of humor, if he is 
wise he will let it appear in his presentation of his sub- 
ject. It will wake up and interest the auditor. It 
also will dispel his frequent notion that religion is at 
best rather a dull and dreary matter that one submits 


94 The Parish Priest 


to as an insurance against hell. One pays so much of 
one’s income a year as an insurance against the conse- 
quences of physical death. It is sensible to invest 
*some—not very much, to be sure—of one’s income and 
one’s time against spiritual death. If it can be made 
clear that religion is not really intended to take the 
joy out of life the man in the pew will brighten up con- 
siderably. If he finds that the representative of religion 
has not lost all sense of humor as a consequence of 
receiving Holy Orders he will be more likely to accept 
the possibility of more advanced religious practice for 
himself. According to the old saying, ‘‘A saint that’s 
sad is a sad saint’’; and if there is no joy of life visible 
in us we shall fail to commend our religion a&$ a happy 
thing. Has religion made you happy? Do you find the 
living of the Christian life an experience of joy and 
beauty? If that is your experience joy and beauty 
will flow out into your expression of religion. There 
are delightful touches of humor in our Lord’s teaching, 
mostly of the ironic sort. The parable of the friend at 
midnight is keenly humorous, and the advice to the 
Pharisee as to taking the lowest seat implies a slight 
quiver of the lips as it is given. Even so grave a per- 
son as St. James must have seen the humor as well 
as the tragedy of the situation when he describes the 
rich man at the worship of the Christians. The situa- 
tion is eternal, and to-day in reading St. James we can 
see the senior warden effusively conducting the dis- 
tinguished and wealthy visitor up the aisle to a favorable 
seat under the pulpit. 

The opening of the sermon is important from the point 
of view of catching the wandering attention of the con- 
gregation under difficult circumstances. The congrega- 


The Parish Priest | 95 


tion is really interested in getting comfortably settled 
for the ensuing twenty minutes or half hour. Those 
fortunate individuals who have, perhaps with some 
breach of good manners of which they would not have 
been guilty elsewhere, achieved possession of end seats, 
are adjusting themselves to an easy position. Others 
are disposing of coats and cloaks and hats in the confined 
circumstances of the pews; others are looking about to 
see who is in church this morning, and it may be are 
struck with a novelty in the way of a hat or dress. 
Into this disturbed mental atmosphere the preacher is 
attempting to inject a spiritual thought. His success is 
most likely going to depend on his first few sentences, 
Assuming success here he will, if his matter and man. 
ner are worth it, probably hold the attention fairly well 
for twenty minutes. Beyond that, with a congregation 
of Church people who have already gone through a 
service of considerable length and who have the greater 
part of the Mass to come, he will find difficulty in going. 
If he goes on successfully it will be because he has words 
quite worth while to say. The old rule of having said 
what he has to say, he should stop, is not altogether an 
easy thing successfully to do. 

There is more art than appears at first sight in end- 
ing a sermon. How many sermons we have listened to 
quite attentively for fifteen minutes or so and then felt 
that the end had been successfully reached. ‘‘He is 
going to stop there,’’ we think, and get ready to rise 
for the ascription. But he does not; he passes the ob- 
vious stopping point; he says, ‘‘and then,’’ or ‘‘one 
thing more,’’ or ‘‘another point,’? and goes on. He 
reaches one more obvious conclusion and we automatic- 
ally shut up our interest. But again he goes on. This 


96 ; The Parish Priest 


sort of thing is tiring. The preacher ought to know— 
to study form until he does know—how to bring his 
sermon to an interesting climax and then stop. He 
should leave it with a vigorously struck note that will 
stick in the minds of the listeners. It is fatal if the 
end of the sermon bring a sigh of relief to the congrega- 
tion. The congregation should be left with the feeling, 
‘‘T am sorry he finished so quickly, I could have listened 
longer; half an hour, was it? I had no idea it was so 
long.’’? Wind up to a climax and stop. Remember that 
every sentence after the climax is exhausting the in- 
terest. 


CHAPTER VIL 
SERMONS TO CHILDREN 


Arter the administration of the sacraments the most 
important work that the priest has to do, and by far 
the most delightful, is the instruction and spiritual train- 
ing of the children committed to his care. At the same 
time it is a very trying work, and one that makes great 
demands on the priest. There is no clearer indication 
of our incompetence in the teaching of religion than our 
Sunday Schools and our assumption that any good- 
natured person who is willing to give the time will do 
for a teacher for the young. I should be inclined to 
go a long way in the opposite direction and contend 
that the ability to deal with children successfully is 
the work of genius. In any event I am quite certain 
that a priest who is a success with children has the 
essential elements of general success as a parish priest. 

Of course by success with children I do not mean 
success as an entertainer. Anyone who is willing to 
give the time can gather a group of boys, take them 
on ‘‘hikes’’ and to ball games and so achieve popularity. 
That however is not to be successful as a pastor of the 
flock. By success in dealing with children I mean suc- 
cess as a teacher and spiritual guide, success in awaken- 
ing them to the actual practice of religion. In dealing 
with children such a priest will no doubt take into 
account the fact that he is dealing with children and 
will give in his relation with them its proper place 
to play. But he will not make the blunder of assuming 
that because he has a successful baseball club or enthusi- 
astic troup of Girl Scouts, he is a success as a pastor, 
and that his duties are fulfilled. 


98 ~The Parish Priest 


The child is a being peculiarly susceptible to spiritual 
impressions. The ‘‘soul naturally Christian’’ is very 
evident in him. He understands religion in a way that 
is very wonderful. This I suppose is because the pure 
soul has placed no obstacles to the working of the Holy 
Spirit and the child mind is neither corrupted by the 
world nor preoccupied by its manifold interests. The 
fundamental conceptions of religion, relation to God and 
responsibility to Him, prayer and sacramental action, 
are taken in and assimilated in a very wonderful way. 
The fact that spiritual conceptions are obscured or lost 
later on is no evidence that they had at an early time no 
reality. In fact, I doubt very much if the well instructed 
child ever loses entire hold on the instruction he has 
received. His spiritual faculties may be dulled by sin 
or atrophied by neglect of practice, but the concepts of 
spiritual religion are there and one is sometimes sur- 
prised in hearing a man who has abandoned religious 
practices vigorously defend religion when it is attacked. 
The hold of the primary instruction is also evidenced 
by the constant experience of the confessional in the 
wanderers’ return after years of neglect, not because 
they have been ‘‘converted’’ by some new experience 
of sin or failure, but because of the impulse of their 
early training and the pull of convictions that have never 
been silenced. 

The parish priest in dealing with his children, has 
to put this before him as his primary duty, that he 
has to make them instructed Christians, Christians who 
to the fullest extent are intelligent in the practice of 
their religion. It will help him tremendously if he will 
get rid of the notion, if he unfortunately has it, that a 
child is blocked from full religious practice because it 


The Parish Priest 99 


‘‘does not understand.’’ The fact in this case is that 
the priest does not understand. Understanding in these 
matters does not come with age but openness of soul. 
I venture to say that if a priest has to prepare for con- 
firmation a child of eight and his father of thirty he 
will have less difficulty in inducing in the child an 
intelligent perception of the sacraments than in the 
father. The child’s soul is eager and open; the father’s 
is preoccupied and is filled with inhibitions. That the 
child is unstable goes without saying, and it is that in- 
stability which will later on constitute his chief danger 
when he experiences a wider contact with the world. 
The special instrument of spiritual education (this 
phrase is much to be preferred to religious education) 
is the sermon. As I look back over my own experience, 
preaching to children has had a joy that I have never 
derived from any other preaching, and I feel that it 
was the most valuable element in my training as a 
preacher. When I left the seminary I went as curate 
to the rector of a large city parish. I found there estab- 
lished a morning service for children. The service- 
routine of the parish was an early celebration, then at 
9:30 a children’s service which was alternately Matins or 
Litany. This was followed later on by Matins or Litany 
in alternation in the children’s service and once a month 
by a late Mass. There was a good sized group of children 
at the 9:30 service. There was a junior boys’ choir 
and a considerable number of adults in attendance. It 
fell to my lot to take most of the preaching at this 
children’s service. What I know about preaching I 
largely learned in the two years’ experience at that 
service. I do not know what impression I made on the 
children, but I know that they were immensely helpful 


100 The Parish Priest 


to me. For a young man without experience and with- 
out much self-confidence to be obliged to start in and 
preach without notes to such a congregation was as 
fine an experience as could be wished. 

It was obvious from the start that I had to prepare 
myself so thoroughly that I could speak easily and freely, 
without hesitation. To hesitate and stammer and grope 
for a word would be fatal in talking to children. I was 
seeking to hold a very unstable attention. You have 
before you a certain element of mischief that will be 
alert to catch you at a disadvantage if it can. You have 
yourself to be alert to that element. I may as well 
digress here and say that I have always found that the 
most effective method of dealing with that element is 
to bring it at once into the sermon and use it as an 
illustration. To say, for instance, that in order to under- 
stand a point I am making close attention is needed 
and to enlarge a little on attention, and then say, ‘Now, | 
Johnny Jones has been whispering for some time. What 
is the result? He has lost the point that I have been 
trying to make and has got no good from this sermon.’’ 
There is nothing that will wilt Johnny more quickly, 
because it makes him the thing he dislikes above all 
others, an object of ridicule to his fellows. At the same 
time, because you have shown no irritation you have 
grained in respect. 

But to return. An easy, fluent manner of address 
is of the first importance. Therefore one must have 
perfect clearness in one’s own mind as to the point one 
is to make. There can be no fumbling, no seeking to 
arrive at a conclusion, one does not know just where. 
These wide awake people are ready to be interested; 
they expect to be interested. Well, if you don’t at once 


The Parish Priest 101 


interest them something else will. Their world is full 
of interest. You are only one competitor for their at- 
tention and therefore you must speak a language they 
understand. I do not mean that you must speak their 
dialect of slang, though it does no harm to drop into 
the vernacular occasionally. I mean you must speak a 
language intelligible to a boy or girl to-day. Don’t talk 
to ‘‘dear children’’ or ‘‘my little friends’’ or ‘‘little 
men and women.’’ Much better—if that is the only 
alternative—to say, ‘‘you kids.’’ That at any rate will 
seem real and the others do not. Don’t sentimentalize, 
but be direct, brutally frank, call spades, spades. When 
you are talking about sins don’t assume ignorance on 
their part. Don’t be taken in by those expressionless 
faces and innocent eyes. Drive your point home with 
direct speech. 

Clearness is absolutely essential. A child will not 
follow an elaborate argument but soon gets bored with 
it. He always has something else to think about which 
is more interesting. We have to be sure, therefore, that 
we have our subject so completely in hand that we know 
the end and the road to it. An adult congregation may 
be interested enough to pick their way through a con- 
fused argument or exposition, but children, not at all. 
Don’t wander off on side issues but keep to the path. 
And we have to remember that what is clear to us may 
not make the impression on the child’s mind that we 
expect it will. The child mind is often confused with 
the complexities of the English language even when the 
child is well on in his teens. I recall once asking an 
intelligent boy of fifteen or sixteen, who was Elisha? 
and was answered without a moment’s hesitation that 
he was a house prophet. That was too much for me, 


102 The Parish Priest 


and I asked what he meant. He meant, again without 
any hesitation, that Elisha stayed in his room and 
prophesied. The absolute certainty of the voy made me 
think there was something the matter with my under- 
standing of the Scriptures. I looked up the lesson and 
found that at the removal of Elijah the Lord appointed 
Elisha to be a prophet in his room! It was less surpris- 
ing to be told by a small girl that Lydia ‘‘lived in a 
purple cellar.’’ An examination on the history of the 
Reformation in England elicited from a High School 
girl the surprising information that the ecclesiastical 
suits were ‘‘the clothes that the priests used to wear.’’ 
The moral is that we cannot be too careful in defining 
when we are dealing with two such extraordinary in- 
struments as the English language and the child mind. 

The holding of attention requires rapid and clear 
enunciation. The imparting of the truth we are con- 
cerned with requires it to be presented over and over 
from all possible angles; to give it a grip upon the 
immature mind it needs to be well illustrated. The 
illustration may be cruder than in the sermon to adults. 
Form is not of so much value; driving force is what we 
are after, and for help we will do well to study the 
large literature of sermons to children. A great deal 
of attention has been paid in the last fifty years to this 
branch of religious literature, and it may be studied 
with profit, especially from the point of view of illus- 
tration. The object lesson sermon may easily be over- 
done. One would not commend the example of the 
bishop who said, ‘‘Children, I can do something that 
you cannot,’’ and thereupon removed his false teeth. 
Misunderstanding is also possible here. A curate at St. 
Mary’s, directing the acolyte at children’s Mass to take 


The Parish Priest 103 


in a mouse trap, elicited the question, ‘‘Are you going 
to bless it, Father?’’ Judgment is always necessary in 
the matter of illustration—and sometimes mercy. 

Here, too, as I held in a former chapter, it is necessary 
to the effectiveness of the illustration that I should 
make it mine. If it is a story it must be my story. I 
must tell it with fervor and interest, as thought it were 
a personal experience of my own. If it is a scene I 
must make it vivid by personal touches, so that the 
children can see it. If it is a person they must feel him; 
he must become utterly real to them. To tell a story 
effectively is a work of art. It is so much more than 
stating certain facts. 

Hivery sermon to children should be a definite instrue- 
tion, preferably an instruction in a single truth, and 
that truth should by no means be left hanging in the 
air. The ineffectiveness of much Sunday School in- 
struction is that it limits itself to the teaching of cate- 
chisms of one sort or another. One looks over a Sunday 
School and one sees a number of well intentioned but 
not very well informed men and women trying to keep 
in order groups of restless children, at best hearing them 
recite the answers to questions that they do not under- 
stand; and one is possessed by a feeling of the hopeless- 
ness of the method. Or one listens to a sermon to 
children that is an instruction on a point of doctrine, 
which, however clear and definite as exposition does not 
penetrate into the life of the child, and one has an equal 
feeling of hopelessness. 

The present tendency of Sunday School development 
to approximate to the public school system with its 
grades and promotions—all, in fact, that is indicated by 
the name, ‘‘Church School’’—while no doubt an ad- 


104 The Parish Priest 


vance on the lack of order and system of the old Sunday 
School, is destined to as great a failure religiously 
speaking, because the ideals are ideals of information 
rather than ideals of religion. System would be valuable 
if it could be introduced into a daily school curriculum, 
but when introduced into the Sunday School it deflects 
the short time at its disposal from its proper end. The 
available balance to this is to be found in the sermon; 
but this the system does not always permit. 

It is possible where children can be and are gathered 
together at Mass before Sunday School and listen to a 
sermon there. The weak place here is that the sermon 
will commonly have no relation to the Sunday School 
lesson which is to follow. To me the ideal place for a 
sermon to children is at the close of the Sunday School 
when the priest can take the central point of the lesson 
and apply it to the actual experience of the children. 
This I know usually presents a number of difficulties in 
parish life, but I myself have not found them insuperable. 
They are rather easy of adjustment in a small parish 
where the order may easily be, Sunday School, sermon 
to children, and the late Mass. The children would have 
been to the early Mass or would remain to the late. 
Children are really not bored by the services of the 
Church and especially not by the Mass, unless it has 
been suggested to them that they will be. Sentimental 
people are always saying, ‘‘How tired Willie and Mary 
must be by the long service!’’ This of course tends to 
make them tired—and other people as well. 

In planning a sermon to children the preacher must 
keep in view a definite end. He is not only going to 
present a truth; he is going to present it in terms of 
life—of the life of the children to whom he is to speak. 


The Parish Priest 105 


A truth which has no application, which the child can- 
not in some way use, is useless if presented at that 
time. If I am preaching about God I must present my 
teaching in terms of worship, dependence, responsibility, 
and so on. If I am preaching about our Lord’s life, 
I must bring each fact as it is presented into rela- 
tion to the child’s life. The child has no use for the 
abstract. He is not a philosopher. He lives in the con- 
crete. The best sermon is one that leads to concrete 
acts. In some cases it may with advantage lead to 
concrete acts then and there. A sermon may very well 
end by teaching an act of faith, then having the children 
make it together. A sermon on thanksgiving may be 
followed by an act of thanksgiving, which has been care- 
fully arranged beforehand with reference to the imme- 
diate circumstances of the child’s life. Sermons on 
moral topics should find application in daily experience. 

The object of all preaching to children is the conver- 
sion of the child—that is to say, the passage of the 
child from theory to practice. Anyone who has dealt 
at all intimately with children can have no doubt at all 
of the depth and reality of their spiritual experience. 
It would be strange if this were not so. It would 
almost amount to a disproof of the Christian theory of 
the sacramental life. The child who has been made a 
member of Christ and has become a temple of the Holy 
Spirit we should certainly expect to respond readily to 
the action of the Spirit, especially to His sacramental 
action. And this we know to be the fact. The child 
receives grace and responds to grace. But it has to be 
taught how to use the grace it has; it has to be taught, 
that is, the principles of the spiritual life. It has to be 
shown how each article of the creed can be translated 
into action. 


106 The Parish Priest 


To show this, to direct the child to the formation of 
spiritual habits, is the business of the preacher. And 
he must realize that this is a positive work. It is posi- 
tive action that the child must learn to take. It is quite 
possible to spend altogether too much time on negatives. 
It is one of the misfortunes of child life that so much of 
its training in religion is purely negative. From the 
dawn of its intelligence it is surrounded in its home 
by a system of tabus. It is constantly warned off this _ 
and that, and when it comes to religion the same thing 
takes place. Its training is largely in regard to sin. 
Its moral life is based on the Ten Commandments. Thus 
the child naturally grows up to look upon religion as 
primarily interference, and to look on adult life as free- 
dom from interference. Bishop Seymour used to tell 
a story of a family discussion on an Haster morning 
as to whether father was to go to church, (which he 
ordinarily did once a year) being interrupted by a small 
boy breaking in with the remark, which was the ripe 
result of some years of observation, ‘‘Men and dogs 
do not go to church. I am not going when I get big.’’ 
The effects of the tabu system could not better be il- 
lustrated. 

As I say, this system is carried largely into the 
education in religion which the child gets in church by 
constant insistence upon sin. Naturally, sin exists and 
has to be dealt with. But there are various ways of 
dealing with it, and there are other things which need 
to be dealt with. The old saying about the devil find- 
ings work for idle hands to do is but an application 
of the wisdom of our Lord’s parable of the empty house. 
You may drive out all the devils there are, but unless 
you get a tenant for the house they will inevitably come 


The Parish Priest 107 


back. Unless you can employ human powers profitably 
they will be employed unprofitably. Every human being 
is going to act in some way and no human being can be 
taught to put in all his time dodging devils. 

The aim therefore of the teacher is to build up posi- 
tive habits of piety, to lead children to the daily practice 
of the Christian life. Not the Ten Commandments but 
the positive virtues must be the subject of the teach- 
ings. Aim to fill his life with concrete, positive action. 
Let there be an ideal of building something and let it be 
put in such a way that it will interest the child. Ser- 
mons that accomplish this are good sermons. 


CHAPTER VIII 
CLASSES AND INSTRUCTIONS 


Tue obligation of the priest thoroughly to instruct 
all the people committed to his care is indisputable. 
The great difficulty of fulfilling this obligation is also 
indisputable. The priest may be as competent as you 
like and as eager as you like, but he can accomplish 
nothing in the way of instruction without eagerness” 
and cooperation on the part of his people. The com- 
plaint that members of the Church are ignorant of most 
elementary matters is well founded, but it does not fol- 
low that it is the fault of the clergy. I fancy that most 
young priests start their parochial life with an ideal 
of instructing their people. They speedily find that 
people badly need instruction. They are apt to criticize 
the neglect of their predecessors in this matter, but after 
a few attempts they abandon their effort to teach, dis- 
couraged and disappointed. The problem of the parish 
is not to find a priest who can instruct, but to find 
people who will listen. 

Because of this universal state of things, it is essential, 
as I have already pointed out, that the sermon should 
always contain an element of instruction. Here, at least, 
the fundamental truths of the creed and the sacraments 
can be clearly and definitely set out. It is in many cases - 
possible to use a second service, afternoon or evening, 
for instruction; and this is decidedly to be recommended 
in parishes where the two congregations are made up 
of predominantly the same people. In this case an after- 
noon or evening course of instructions, brief—not more 
than fifteen minutes—clear, and pointed will often be 
popular. 


The Parish Priest 109 


Apart from these instructions associated with the Sun- 
day services, most must be given in week-day classes of 
one sort or another. The priest must make up his mind 
that such classes are not going to draw crowds and that 
the best he can do is to instruct a minority of the parish, 
and those, at that, who are least in need of instruction : 
but, if he have any faculty as a teacher, he can gather a 
few people who want to learn and can educate them in 
the theory and practice of the Catholic religion. He can 
feel a certain satisfaction in this—that he has accom- 
plished something which will be permanent and bear 
fruit. 

As the revelation of God made in Holy Scripture is 
the basis of our religion, the Bible class is an important 
instrument of instruction. Probably there is no subject 
in which definite and intelligent instruction is more 
needed to-day than the Bible. The information that fil- 
ters down into the popular mind as to the ‘‘results of 
criticism,’’ as to what ‘‘scholarship has achieved,’’ or 
as to “‘the assured conclusions of modern knowledge’’ 
produces, I presume, and is intended to produce a sense 
of uncertainty and unsettlement as to the very founda- 
tions of religion. On the other hand, both unbelief and 
liberal religion have, it would seem deliberately, identi- 
fied the Catholic teaching with what is known as 
Fundamentalism and have produced the impression 
either that one must take an attitude of opposition to 
all modern knowledge or that one must reduce one’s 
creed to something that is undistinguishable from 
Unitarianism. To clear up the misunderstandings that 
are involved in the present situation is a vital matter. 
To make it clear that the Catholic can accept all the 
actual conclusions of science and the true results of 


110 The Parish Priest 


criticism, as distinguished in both cases from mere ill- 
based theory and guess-work, is of great moment. Our 
people may know nothing about the questions at issue, 
but they know that there is an issue; and, as all they 
read in the daily and weekly press is pretty uniformly 
on the side of destructive criticism and unbelief, they 
may be excused if they get the impression that orthodox 
Christianity has very little to say for itself. 

Hence the need of Bible classes. To meet the present 
issues the best sort of Bible class is one that frankly 
takes up the questions raised by criticism and sets out 
the Catholic position. That position is fully defensible, 
it is in no wise to be confounded with Fundamentalism, 
it accepts actual results of criticism without hesitation, 
and is able to defend itself against extreme positions 
held by small and shifting groups of critics. 

My own opinion is, as the outcome of considerable 
experience, that the best type of Bible class to meet 
these questions is one that is detached from the church. 
1 would recommend a class held in a private house. Get 
some one who has large rooms to place a house at your 
disposal once a week. The hour will be determined by 
local conditions. Issue invitations to the capacity of 
your rooms; select your people and, if there is room, go 
outside your congregation. The semi-social atmosphere 
of the affair, the fact that it is by invitation, has a 
drawing value. It enables you also to get hold of people 
who would not come to a class in church. It also gives 
freedom for questions and discussion which is never felt 
in quite the same way in the church. A dozen lectures 
directed to fundamental problems ought to clear the 
situation adequately. 


The Parish Priest 111 


In doing this you have reached a set of people who 
will, at least, not be victims hereafter of ordinary news- 
paper misrepresentation. Not that the newspaper in- 
tends to misrepresent, but it seems to be the settled 
policy of most newspapers never to assign to report on 
a matter that concerns religion any one who would 
recognize the Christian religion if he met it in the 
street. It was said some years ago of an eminent 
novelist that his ignorance must have been acquired, 
as no one could possibly have been born so ignorant. 
The same might be said of the ignorance which prevails 
in newspaper circles of even the commonest words in 
the Christian vocabulary. The man who reported that 
the procession was closed by the Bishop wearing the 

reredos might surely be many times paralleled. 
There is another type of Bible class, one that is in- 
tended for more intensive study of Bible teaching. This 
usually confines itself to the study of particular books of 
the Bible in more or less detailed exposition. To interest 
a class in a running commentary on a book of the Bible is 
rather difficult and requires a good deal of preparation 
and cannot be successfully done unless the lesson has 
been prepared in detail. It is apt to fail in interest 
through too much attention to detailed exposition—the 
thing which renders the ordinary commentary so hope- 
lessly dull. 

A Bible class intended to bring out the spiritual and 
practical teaching of the New Testament will do well 
to take one of two forms: either the form of a life 
of our Lord in which His ministry is followed step by 
step, which, if done in detail, would take at least two 
years. This is most profitable and there is abundant 
material. Or it may take the form of a study of St. 


112 The Parish Priest 


Paul’s or St. John’s presentation of Christianity. Care- 
ful study of St. Paul’s works is of course essential to the 
theologian, and he can make practical use of such study 
in the Bible class.’ 

Bible class work with the young will best take the 
form of the Bible story. The history can be followed 
as a series of episodes without going into detail. This 
enables one to present the early part of the Old Testa- 
ment for what it actually is—a set of stories going back 
to Semitic folklore, but recast in the form in which we 
have them for the purpose of inculeating special spiritual 
teaching. One can thus treat the story naturally as the 
vehicle of spiritual or moral lessons, without laying any 
importance on its historical character. This starts the 
child on the right road in Bible study—fixes the atten- 
tion, that is, on what is taught rather than upon the 
medium of the teaching. 

It is, of course, very different when we pass to the 
New Testament history of the life of our Lord and the 
founding of the Church. A set of lessons on the Book 
of the Acts may be and commonly is a pretty deadly 
business, but that is because of the lack of preparation 
on the part of the teacher. With an adequate historical 
and archeological background, the book may be made 
fascinating, especially because of the fact that it is our 
own spiritual ancestors and the founders of our Church 
that we are concerned with in this study. 

It is assumed that people are not very much interested 
in Church history. I suppose that is true; but that it is 
true is due to the manner in which it is taught. When 
one reads in the life of Macaulay of the enormous popular 


1Note: Any one who reads French will find a splendid and exhaustive 
treatment of St. Paul’s teaching in Prat, “La Theologie de St. Paul,” 2 
vols., Paris, Beauchesne. 


The Parish Priest 113 


appeal that his History of England had among all 
classes, one understands that it is possible to interest 
people in history. The recent success of Mr. Wells’s 
Outline was no doubt in a certain measure a succés 
de scandale, but also it was due to the popular mode 
of presentation. The vogue of Farrar’s Life of Christ, 
in the last generation, and of Papini’s in the present, is 
a sufficient proof that form will carry matter. 

And form will carry a class in Church history. I have 
known classes followed by enthusiasm and increasing 
numbers through the whole winter. This was because 
of the mode of presentation—sketchy no doubt, but vivid, 
grasping the essential points, emphasizing picturesque 
detail, bringing the narrative constantly into connection 
with contemporary life and thought. Even the dreari- 
ness of religious controversy, which nearly annihilates 
one’s faith, as one reads it in such a book as Bright’s 
Church of the Fathers can be made into a vivid 
narrative of experience which is illustrated from con- 
temporary life and manners. The heretics are not all 
dead, by any means, and we can find the reincarnation 
of Arius in the Reverend Mr. X, our own contemporary. 
America is still inventing new religions. Men are still 
among us who explain to us now, for the first time, what 
our Lord really taught. 

What is true of history is true of dogma. It is only 
dull because we make it so. It is perhaps difficult to 
gather people in a class in dogmatic theology. Let us 
therefore change the form, let us in the matter of the- 
ology substitute the meditation for the class instruction 
and recast our dogmas into their spiritual values. For 
teaching practical personal religion I would put the medi- 
tation as the most effective instrument. You begin by 


114 The Parish Priest 


gathering a small group of people on a week-day, for 
an avowedly spiritual purpose. You throw them into a 
devotional attitude at the outset by the opening prayers 
and preludes. Then you sit down and talk quietly to 
them about a point of personal religion for half an hour 
or more. You may be sure that you are building up 
these people in the Faith. 

Why do we not use the meditation more as a means 
of spiritual development in our parishes? I think that 
there are two principal reasons. The first is that so — 
many of the clergy themselves are not trained in the 
use of meditation, and therefore do not appreciate its 
spiritual value nor understand its mechanism. If a 
parish priest has been for some years making a daily 
meditation, and if now that he faces the responsibility 
of parish work he is preparing himself to meet it by a 
daily Mass and a half-hour Spent alone with our Lord 
in meditation, he will have passed beyond the sphere 
of theory and will know by experience what is the 
spiritual value of regular meditation. He will] under- 
stand that the value derived from meditation is not a 
concern of priests only, but that any Christian who is in 
earnest about his spiritual development will derive great 
benefit from the practice. He will therefore want to 
teach people to meditate. He can, of course, and will, 
exhort them to do so; he can give them books of medi- 
tation as samples and guides. He will also understand 
that it will be vastly helpful to get a group of people 
together and lead them in meditation. This not only 
teaches them method in the best way by seeing medita- 
tion practised, but it also gives them material to work 
upon themselves. They are taught not only how to 
meditate, but what to meditate. Meditation is’ ins 


The Parish Priest wTS 


tellectual prayer; it is an attempt to understand the 
meaning of our religion in order to the more effective 
appreciation of it. The private meditation of the be- 
ginner is apt to be self-centered—there is too much self 
and not enough of God in it. We need to begin with 
God, with one of His thoughts, and to see the meaning 
of that in itself before we can get at the meaning of 
it in our own lives. Those who have attended for some 
time properly conducted meditations come to absorb 
the method and learn effectively to practice meditation 
in private. 

Another reason why the meditation is not more widely 
used as a means of the spiritual training of a parish 
is that so few of the clergy have any adequate training 
in spiritual theology, the theory and practice of the 
spiritual life. Here at present is the weakest point in 
the training of the clergy. Spiritual theology is as 
distinct a branch of theological science as dogmatic 
theology. It is to dogmatics what practice is to theory 
in any branch of learning. The young priest, there- 
fore, starts with a handicap imposed upon him by the 
indifference and ignorance of Church authorities, but 
he ought to feel the loss and set himself to make the 
omission good by his own private studies. There is 
abundant and fascinating literature available. Until he 
has acquainted himself with spiritual theology he is un- 
likely to appreciate the value of such a practice as 
meditation in the development of the spiritual life of 
his parish. 

He needs carefully to study the technique of medi- 
tation, for one thing, that he may not fall into the 
mistake of fancying that a meditation is a sermon and 
lead his people to fancy so. There is a decided difference 


116 The Parish Priest 


in the method of the two—the approach is different, 
the preliminary prayers, the composition of place, the 
devotional preludes all tend to produce a different 
psychological attitude from that produced by the sermon. 
The exposition, with its constant touch on personal life, 
its intimate dealing with spiritual problems, is intended 
to carry the listener into the inner places of his life, to 
arouse to an intense self-examination, and leave a last- 
ing impression which will be fixed by resolution. If 
people can be taught (and they can) not just to listen 
as they listen to a sermon, but to take the substance of the 
meditation away with them and work it over in their 
own private meditations, great good will have been ac- 
complished. 

Perhaps the most neglected of all subjects in present 
day teaching in Sunday school or in pulpit is Christian 
morals. That, in view of the many sermons we hear, 
may seem a statement which needs a good deal of justi- 
fication. Do we not at times even hear complaints that 
the teaching of theology has been abandoned in favor 
of merely moral teaching? That is true, but that moral 
teaching usually has very little to do with Christian 
morals. The morals that we hear in sermons are usually 
the conventions of the time and place and group. Social 
conventions, what everybody does in our set, have little 
relation to the morality of the Christian religion. 
Such conventions are constantly changing. A distin- 
guished American recently said, @ propos of prohibition: 
‘“‘T suppose that all over the country men and women 
of the highest moral type are breaking the Volstead 
Law with a feeling of satisfaction, rather than re- 
proach.’’? Obviously, what is meant here is the moral 
convention of a special group. There is no connection 


The Parish Priest 117 


between the social conventions of those indicated and 
the Sermon on the Mount. ‘‘Morals’’ here means what is 
done by the people one knows. If we pass to another 
social group we find other laws violated ‘‘with a feel- 
ing of satisfaction, rather than reproach.’’ Not long 
ago we read of the funeral of a gunman who died 
nobly, in the opinion of his fellows. That, at least, is 
the impression given by the fact that his friends lavished 
fifty thousand dollars on flowers at his funeral. 

The conventions of various social groups are one thing, 
the morality of the Christian religion is another. They 
mostly touch at certain points, but they never wholly 
coincide. It is time that the Christian teacher got away 
from social convention as the basis of his teaching. 
Such conventions are subject to constant change. We 
have only to go back a very few years to note radical 
changes in many respects in the social conventions of 
America. A study of the nature of the changes indi- 
cates that the only moral basis of the average man or 
woman is ‘‘what everybody does.’’ Take one or two 
outstanding instances. In the last fifty years tht 
American attitude toward the observance of Sunday has 
undergone a profound alteration. It is not too much 
to say that, for the majority of Americans, Sunday is 
now merely another holiday. Some people, no doubt, 
still go to church, but of those who go to church a 
great many, I am inclined to think the majority, regard 
the time not spent in church as free time for all sorts 
of amusements. Almost anywhere that one goes now on 
a Sunday evening one finds either card playing or sewing 
going on. I am not expressing an opinion about these 
things; I am merely pointing to the change as a change 
in social conventions. ‘‘Don’t you play cards on Sun- 


118 The Parish Priest 


day?’’ the young girl asked, ‘Things are changed now, 
every one plays.”’ 

Yes, every one plays, and a good many play for money. 
The increase in gambling is a notable fact to-day. There 
are very few places where it carries with it any social 
stigma. It begins with children in the shadow of the 
public school, the authorities of which do not interfere. 
It extends to all grades of society; every one does it 
and therefore it cannot be wrong. 

One more instance is the decay of modesty. Very 
radical indeed is the change in the matter within the 
lifetime of one who has reached middle age. It is un- 
necessary to specify the evidence. It is just that our 
notion of what is modest and what is not differs from 
our fathers’ and mothers’ notion, it is said. We are not 
really more immodest; which, being translated, means 
that modesty from this point of view is merely a con- 
ventional code which is open at any time to alteration. 

That is precisely what I am contending—that in these 
and most other things men have been actuated by social 
conventions and not by the morals of the Christian 
Church. There is Christian teaching in such matters 
as Sunday observance and gambling and modesty, and 
it is high time that those who are commissioned to 
teach the Christian religion emphasize it and declare 
unflinchingly what the Christian standard is and what 
it requires. This, no doubt, is not the way to popularity. 
IT am afraid that, before setting about to teach the 
Christian principles of conduct, some of the clergy will 
have to submit to a revolution in their own lives. It is 
perhaps charitable to assume that they are as ignorant 
of Christian morals as those whom it is their duty to 
instruct, but to-day the work is needed if we are not to 


The Parish Priest 119 


stand aside and see the world slump down into still 
further moral degradation. 

It is a great help that classes in morals can be made 
very interesting. People are at least interested in the 
discovery that there are fundamental moral principles 
inherent in the religion which they profess. They are 
immensely interested in the discussion of moral questions 
because it means the discussion of the actual details 
of daily life. So far as they have had any notion of 
Christian teaching as to conduct, it has been of a very 
fragmentary sort and mostly of a negative character, 
based on the Ten Commandments. In education the Ten 
Commandments do probably more harm than good, at 
the present day. They teach people to construe life 
negatively and to understand morals as a set of tabus. 

Constructive morals begins with our Lord’s teaching 
of the spiritual principles guiding action. It indicates 
that life is to be guided by ideals and not by laws, 
that in Christian conduct we speedily pass beyond right 
and wrong, good and bad, to choice between alternatives 
of which the one better ministers to the production of 
spiritual character than the other. So long, for example, 
as Sunday observance is based upon a law of abstinence, 
it is quite unintelligible, and one can appreciate the in- 
tellectual fog that darkens the mind of the good lady 
who is shocked at the spectacle of boys playing ball 
in a field, as she rides by in her motor. No doubt she 
rides in her motor ‘‘with a feeling of satisfaction, rather 
than reproach.’’ But then, the small boy plays ball with 
the same easy conscience. The question that is raised 
however, is not, ‘‘Is it right on Sunday to ride in a 
motor, or wrong to play ball?’’ but, ‘‘ What is the actual 
purpose of Sunday, and are we fulfilling that?’’ 


120 The Parish Priest 


A careful study of Christian morals and the faithful 
teaching of them is to-day perhaps the greatest need of 
the Church, and by virtue of its novelty it will always 
attract attention and interest. It will do this in children, 
as well as in adults. The class of small boys, whose 
attention can be kept on subjects theological only with 
great difficulty, will enthusiastically discuss the questions 
of conduct that morals raises. The clergy who are 
looking about for an interesting course of instruction 
for their people have it ready at hand. May they have 
the courage to use the opportunity! 


CHAPTER IX 
Preparation For ConrirMaTion 


Berore considering the nature of the preparation re- 
quired for baptism and confirmation it is well that we 
should recall to our minds what is the theological con- 
nection between these two sacraments. 

In baptism the soul is born again of water and the 
Spirit, and has imparted to it three supernatural gifts or 
faculties, the so-called theological virtues of Faith, Hope, 
and Charity. These gifts enable the Christian to live 
a life in harmony with the will of God in his mental 
processes, in his volitions, and in the bestowal of his 
affections. Faith illumines the mind so that it can 
know God, Hope empowers the will to serve Him, and 
Charity fills the heart with love for God and for our 
neighbors. These faculties increase and develop with 
the faithful practice of our religion. Ideally, the Chris- 
tian will make his pilgrimage through this world 
‘*steadfast in faith, joyful through hope, and rooted in 
charity.’’ 

Confirmation is the completion of baptism. It 
fully equips the child of God with the armor 
that is necessary for an effective Christian war- 
fare. Through the laying on of the Bishop’s 
hands, and through the prayer of the Church, the seven 
gifts of the Holy Ghost are imparted to the soul for 
its further strengthening. These new gifts confirm 
the earlier gifts received in baptism: Faith, Hope, and 
Charity. Four of them are intellectual. They deepen 
and broaden the virtue of faith. They are Wisdom, 
Understanding, Counsel, and Knowledge. The gift of 
Ghostly Strength reinforces the virtue of hope by bracing 


122 The Parish Priest 


up the natural weakness of the will. The gifts of Piety, 
or true godliness, and Holy Fear, reinvigorate the ener- 
gies of Charity. Thus confirmation is a sacrament 
admirably adapted to guide and intensify our spiritual 
development. 

From this point of view it is easy to determine the 
age at which a child should be confirmed. The gifts of 
God are to be desired for the soul as soon as it can 
make profitable use of them. A child should be con-_ 
firmed as soon as he is capable of exercising faith, by 
intelligently repeating the creed; of exercising hope, 
by entertaining a conscious desire for heaven; of exer- 
cising charity, by consciously loving God and trying to 
obey Him. Inasmuch as he is necessarily living in the 
environment of a fallen world the child will at this 
age be capable of entertaining doubts about the faith, 
of seeking for lower prizes or being swayed by lower 
motives than the Kingdom of God, and of. being dis- 
obedient to the commandments of God and selfish and 
unloving toward his neighbors. That is why he needs 
the grace of confirmation, when—as the Prayer Book 
expresses it—he has come to years of discretion. He 
knows the difference between right and wrong, he has 
felt the subtle power of temptation. In the normal child 
this would mean the age of seven or eight. At the very 
latest, every healthy child of nine or ten can say the 
Creed, the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments, 
and ought to be sufficiently instructed in the other parts 
of the Church Catechism set forth for that purpose. 

In the average child this is the age of spiritual awaken- 
ing and extreme curiosity about religion, whereas the 
age of puberty is the time when the child’s energies are 
being diverted from mental and spiritual concerns to 


The Parish Priest 1D: 


physical processes. Even at school it is abundantly 
evident that girls of twelve and boys of fourteen are 
passing through a listless, fallow period when they take 
little interest in their studies. Quite naturally this is the 
age when children often become bored with religion. 
It is the height of folly to postpone confirmation to 
the age of puberty. The most rudimentary knowledge of 
child psychology should preserve us from that blunder. 

Nevertheless the tradition that twelve or fourteen is 
the proper age for confirmation has become so strongly 
imbedded in the popular mind that it will often be neces- 
sary for the priest to treat confirmation simply as one 
step in our spiritual progress, and to lay stress on teach- 
ing children from seven on, through some sort of cate- 
chism, the main truths and practices of the Catholic 
religion, train them to say their prayers and make 
monthly confessions and prepare them to receive 
communion with penitence and devotion at least once 
a month. This would involve no violation of the Prayer 
Book rule as expressed in the rubric at the end of the 
Confirmation Office. These children may be admitted to 
communion because they are ready and desirous to be 
confirmed. In other words, the preparation for con- 
firmation should be spread over five or six years, and 
should consist in the thorough grounding of the child 
not only in the faith and morals of the Church, but in 
the intelligent practice of the Catholic religion. As the 
day for confirmation approaches it might be advisable 
to gather the candidates into classes in which they could 
be given some weeks of final instruction. But if they 
have not been thoroughly trained long before, such in- 


struction will be of little avail. 


1I wish that every priest in the American Episcopal Church would 
read the little book by the Rev. A. H. Baverstock, When Should Children 
Be Confirmed? published by the Faith Press in London in 1920. 


124. The Parish Priest 


My contention, then, has been that children should be 
confirmed at the age of innocence and spiritual awaken- 
ing, normally from seven to ten years, Failing that, 
the best plan is to wait until the awkward age of physical 
development has passed, and gather into our confirmation 
classes as many young people as possible from the ages 
of seventeen to twenty-one. Ina country like England 
this postponement of confirmation would enormously re- 
duce the number of those who are to be confirmed; © 
but in the United States, where Protestantism is still 
the dominant religion, and confirmation is almost un- 
known and little understood, it ought to be possible for 
every zealous priest to get hold of many such young 
people. This is the age (seventeen to twenty-one) when 
many are converted from one form of religion to another. 
It is the age of intellectual development and inquiry 
and during these years the need of the help that religion 
only can give is often keenly felt. Through our young 
people’s societies and the social entertainments given by 
them we should make every effort to meet young men and 
young women and see if we cannot interest them in re- 
ligion. Young people’s clubs and societies, in America 
at least, should be the greatest feeders for the Church. 

This leads us to the subject of the preparation of 
adults for confirmation. It often includes the prepara- 
tion for baptism as well, for we shall find that many of 
these adult candidates have never been baptized. To 
prepare an adult for confirmation is one of the highest 
privileges that ever comes to a parish priest. Here is 
an opportunity to convert a human soul, to transform 
and renew a human mind in accordance with the will 
of God for all eternity. Can any other part of the 
priest’s work compare with this in importance? He 


The Parish Priest 125 


ought to wrestle in prayer for that soul night and 
day. We should be constantly on the watch for such 
opportunities and should always have a number of such 
people under our instruction and in our prayers. 

The best way to prepare adults for baptism and con- 
firmation is to take them one by one. To instruct 
adults for confirmation in classes seems much like try- 
ing to fill a lot of bottles with water by throwing a 
pail of water in their general direction. A few drops 
may enter some of the bottles, but most of them will 
remain empty. It is far more sensible to take each 
bottle by the neck and pour the water into it until it 
is full. The place for this individual instruction is 
preferably not the priest’s study nor the home of the 
candidate, but the church. Sisters, when a parish is 
so fortunate as to have them, may prepare the women 
for confirmation, and priests the men. There is no doubt 
that it will be arduous work for the clergy and sisters, 
and will make heavy demands on their time. But this 
is the kind of work for which they have been set apart. 
Nothing else that they can do will bring more enduring 
spiritual results. 

We now come to the subjects for instruction and train- 
ing. I stress the word training. Preparation for con- 
firmation implies not only the comprehension by the mind 
of certain facts and principles, but the training of the 
will in definite practices and habits of prayer and devo- 
tion. In fact, the devotional approach to religion is 
more effective with most people than the intellectual. 
Instruction and training for confirmation, then, will fall 
under four heads: dogma, morals, worship, and the 
spirit of Christ. 


126 The Parish Priest 


1. The Christian is first under obligation to believe the 
faith of the Church as comprised mainly in the creeds. 
It should be explained that faith is not the same as 
knowledge, which can come only after years of spiritual 
experience. Faith is an adventure, an hypothesis which 
one has been encouraged to make because of the authori- 
tative witness of the Catholic Church through nineteen 
centuries. We believe in God and all His Church doth 
teach, because He hath said it and His word is true. 
If a person cannot make this adventure he is not ready 
to be confirmed. The priest should take advantage of 
the occasion not only to explain the principal beliefs 
of the Church, but to deal frankly with any doubts or 
misapprehensions in the mind of the candidate. He 
may well recommend a course of reading on Christian 
doctrine adapted to the needs and intellectual capacity 
of the one under instruction. He may also at this time 
explain the practice of meditation so that a beginning 
may be made in this most useful art. Christians go 
astray not so much because they do not believe as be- 
cause they do not give heed to the meaning and implica- 
tions of what they believe. A course of meditations on 
Christian doctrine would do much to remedy this defect. 

2. In giving instruction in the field of morals, in view 
of the well known proneness of human beings to do the 
very opposite of what they are commanded, it is wise 
to present the moral obligations of the Christian as little 
as possible under the form of precepts and command- 
ments, but rather as the way revealed by God which 
leads to more abundant life here and hereafter. The 
Christian, if he be led of the Spirit, is no longer under 
the Law, but under grace; and the reproduction of the 
divine life within him ought to result ultimately in 


The Parish Priest abi 


bringing forth the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, 
long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self- 
control. It is a positive life of moral virtue that should 
be developed within us, and not merely a negative ab- 
stention from sin and vice. Moreover, the priest should 
draw out from his pupil his own moral] ideas, and ascer- 
tain just what courses of action he considers right and 
wrong, and why. Wherever he finds mistaken or inade- 
quate conceptions he may correct and complete them. 
Especially he must make clear in what respects the 
morals of the Gospel differ from the morals of modern 
society. All this instruction will lead naturally and 
easily to a training in the practice of self-examination 
and ultimately to sacramental confession. 

3. Under the head of Worship the primary subject of 
our instruction must be the Mass. ‘‘It is the Mass that 
matters.’’ Many of those whom we are preparing with 
a view to their first communion will have the most dis- 
torted and inchoate notions of Catholic worship; and 
our insistence that the Eucharist is the chief act of 
worship will at first mean little to them. Gradually, and 
particularly if they have been brought up under Prot- 
estant tutelage, the Catholic principle of sacramentalism, 
the seven sacraments as ministering to the deepest 
human needs, and especially the Blessed Sacrament as 
enabling us to offer the crucified Saviour to the Father 
as our Sacrifice and to receive Him from the Father as 
the sustenance of our spiritual life, will appeal to these 
starved souls as the most beautiful and reasonable phase 
of the Church’s system. Here again we must endeavor 
to solve the difficulties and dispel the doubts of those 
who have been grievously misled on almost everything 
connected with the sacraments. In teaching them cor- 


128 The Parish Priest 


rect sacramental doctrine we must necessarily teach 
them much about ceremonial and Catholic practices of 
devotion. Most of all we must try to help them form 
the habit of attending Mass every Sunday and often on 
a week day—even long before they are ready to make 
their communions. This is as good a time as any to 
present to them private books of devotion to guide them 
in hearing Mass intelligently. 

4. Finally, there is the fourth subject for instruction, 
the spirit of Christ. St. Paul said, ‘‘If any man have not 
the spirit of Christ he is none of his.” By this he meant 
the mind of Christ. ‘‘Let this mind be in you which was 
also in Christ Jesus.’? We must study the Gospels to 
learn what are the chief characteristics of the mind or 
the spirit of Christ, which is the remedy and defence 
against the spirit of the world with which we are only too 
familiar. There are at least five elements of the spirit of 
Christ on which we may dwell in our instructions: the 
spirit of prayer, the spirit of charity, the spirit of humil- 
ity, the spirit of sacrifice, and the spirit of righteousness 
or justice. There is no space in this chapter to develop 
these separate ideas. They may be found amply de- 
veloped and illustrated in the four Gospels. Under this 
heading the practical side of our teaching will deal with 
prayer and in general with all practices involved in the 
ascetic and mystical life. Here we must begin by teach- 
ing the candidate in the most rudimentary way how to 
pray, and urging him to use definite forms of prayer in his 
daily morning and evening devotions. 

As in the case of young children, so with adults, we 
should make confirmation not the goal, but only a step 
on the way. We should admit them to their communions 
very soon after they have made their first confessions, 


The Parish Priest 129 


and then encourage them to communicate frequently. 
After they have demonstrated that they are in earnest 
in trying to live the spiritual life and have given some 
proof that they will persevere we are justified in pre- 
senting them to the Bishop for confirmation. 


CHAPTER X 
Quiet Days anp Rerreats 


One of the greatest benefits which came to the Church 
from the Oxford Movement was the institution of re- 
treats and quiet days. The custom of making a retreat 
has widely spread, especially during the last twenty-- 
five years, until to many persons it has become a regular 
element in their spiritual life. Beginning in the form 
of retreats for clergy and religious, it was extended to 
the -laity, especially to women who were associates of 
religious orders. It has now extended its scope and is 
more and more penetrating into parochial life. Here 
its practice is being steadily extended until it touches 
all the elements of the parish. 

From the beginning, individuals have been welcomed 
at religious houses and aided in the making of retreats 
there. This work now bids fair to be greatly extended 
in the near future by the establishment of houses whose 
function it is to afford facilities for those who desire, for 
a longer or shorter time, to retire from the world and 
be alone with God. The pioneer work of the retreat 
house conducted by the Sisters of the Holy Nativity at 
Bay Shore, Long Island, is a notable example of what 
can be done in this matter and of-the need for doing 
it. Here all the year round is a retreat house open to 
women who wish to make a retreat, or for a time to 
place themselves under religious instruction, or who, 
for any reason, desire the quiet, peaceful atmosphere of 
a religious house. It is a great need of the Church to-day 
that such houses of retreat be multiplied and made ac- 
cessible not only for women, but for men and for children. 


The Parish Priest tod 


Such houses of retreat create their own demand. When 
they become available there is soon developed the per- 
ception of the need of them. 

As an element in parochial life, the value of the re- 
treat is becoming more and more recognized. From most 
parishes of the Catholic type a few women have been 
going each year to an annual retreat or a quiet day 
given under the auspices of one of the religious orders. 
It is now recognized that there are many women in a 
parish who would value the opportunity of a day’s 
retreat, but who have not been brought into touch with 
the opportunity. What they need is opportunity and 
instruction. The institution of a parochial quiet day 
brings the opportunity and at least arouses curlosity. 
The teaching of the parish priest, the influence of friends 
who have experienced the benefits of retreats, will draw 
more and more to attendance. A retreat work compe- 
tently carried on in a parish is bound to grow and each 
year reach more and more people, not only within the 
boundary of the parish, but beyond. 

The technique of the parochial quiet day is very 
simple. There must be preparation for two simple meals. 
The arrangements for these should be in the hands of 
those who are not at all connected with the quiet day 
and, if possible, should be catered from the outside. The 
day should begin with the Mass. Here a difficulty arises: 
there will be a number of people who cannot, or think 
they cannot, get to the Mass, whether because of dis- 
tance or family arrangements. Absence from Mass, 
though much to be regretted, may be tolerated when it 
seems necessary. There will be others who say that they 
cannot come for the whole day, but would like to come 
to one meditation. It is better to discourage these as 


bee The Parish Priest 


an alien element. It can be explained to them that a 
quiet day is a devotional whole, not a series of sermons, 
and that it is to be confined to those who can give their 
whole time. To permit dropping in will prove in the 
end injurious to the day, because the incidental people 
never get into the spirit of the day, never get to learn 
what a retreat is; and the psychological influence of an 
alien element is bad for those who are trying to make © 
the retreat. I have given quiet days which seemed to 
me quite profitless because of the constant shifting of 
attendance at meditations. The few who came early 
were ultimately swamped by the numbers who came in 
for one meditation, as they found it convenient. It 
should be made clear that only those are expected at 
the quiet day who can keep it as a whole. 

Another trouble due largely to the dropper-in is the 
increased difficulty of keeping the rule of silence. A 
person coming in at the second meditation and staying 
to lunch naturally hasn’t caught the spirit of the re- 
treat and will quite probably disregard the rule of 
silence; but the success of the retreat depends largely 
upon the keeping of this rule. It is a vast mistake to 
imagine that all that is important in the retreat is the 
instruction—that we go simply to hear the meditations. 
The success of the meditations as spiritual impulse de- 
pends in great measure upon the atmosphere in which 
they are delivered. If this is restless and inattentive, 
if the mind is constantly carried off to exterior things, 
both the director and the retreatants spiritually feel an 
adverse influence. The psychological effect of the silence 
is great, and it should not be permitted to be relaxed 
in the least degree. This atmosphere the droppers-in 
disturb, even when they actually do not break the silence. 


The Parish Priest | foo 


Their minds are not in harmony, no matter how good 
may be the intention. | 

To return to the routine of the day—Mass is followed 
by breakfast. If breakfast and lunch are simply and 
thoughtfully arranged, there will be need of almost no 
serving. The food can be on the table and, if care be 
taken, the objects which have to be passed can be pro- 
vided in such numbers that they can be reached by all. 
It is best, if possible, to serve at small tables, in which 
case all that is needed is on each table and serving is 
unnecessary. ‘This prevents confusion and noise. At 
both breakfast and lunch there should be reading aloud, 
which should be done by some one who knows how to 
read. Not any book that happens to be handy should 
be read, but thought should be given beforehand to the 
nature of the audience and the suitability of the book 
to it. 

A workable time table fixes the Mass at half past 
seven or eight, and the meditations at ten, twelve, and 
three. This does not leave very much free time, but it 
leaves quite enough for beginners who are not accus- 
tomed to the use of free time. It is well that they 
should be taught to use this time in making an outline 
of the meditation they have just heard. If this is clear 
in their minds they can make the meditation over in 
terms of their own life. I am not in favor either of using 
the free time for miscellaneous prayers, for catching up 
with one’s intercessions, for example. The whole at- 
tention should be, to the greatest extent possible, kept 
fixed on the day and not permitted to wander off. Prayer 
no doubt there will be, but it should be prayer that con- 
cerns the day; intensive prayer, in an attempt at the 
deeper grasp of the meaning of the meditation; prayer 


134 The Parish Priest 


of intercession, that we may be able to understand our- 
selves in the light of the meditations and may have grace 
and strength to put them into operation in our own 
lives; prayer of self-oblation, where here in the divine 
presence we consecrate ourselves anew to Him who is 
our Saviour; prayer, too, of self-examination there must 
be, prayer for light to see ourselves in the mirror of the 
truths- which have been presented and to apply them » 
directly to our own lives, and to avoid the temptation 
of applying them to others. These and the like things 
retreatants need to learn, and the parish priest should 
take opportunity to make them plain. Many people go 
into a retreat without knowing what it is all about— 
go at the invitation of some friend, and miss much that 
a little instruction would have made available for them. 

The time between the meditations may also be used 
in making self-examination, especially if confession is to 
follow. Otherwise it can be filled in with devotional 
reading. It is well, in the notification of the retreat, 
to suggest to the retreatants that they bring a book of 
private prayers and a book for devotional reading. In 
convents and in some parishes it is possible to supply 
books for the day, but this is not usual. I am not in 
favor of the average person attempting to take notes 
of the meditation as it is delivered. It is impossible for 
most people so to occupy themselves without losing the 
spiritual effect that the meditation is supposed to have 
and aims at producing. It is much better to jot down 
points that appeal to one during the free time or after 
one gets home. 

Retreats for women have become an established ele- 
ment in the life of the Church and are doing much 
to deepen the spiritual life of its members. Retreats for 


The Parish Priest 135 


men are much more rare, but enough has been done in 
this way to prove their possibility and helpfulness— 
they have passed beyond the experimental stage. I do 
not know why it hag been so largely assumed that men 
as a rule are incapable of anything more than routine 
religion and are impervious to deep spiritual experience. 
Yet only the existence of some such assumption can 
account for the neglect to attempt to develop them 
spiritually. The clergy seem to assume that, while the 
women of their parishes can be approached on spiritual 
lines, can be offered the spiritual opportunity of days of 
intercession and quiet days, the men of their parishes 
are best approached through fraternal societies and 
country clubs. You can pray with a woman, but to 
influence a man you have to smoke and drink with him. 

That implies a radical misunderstanding of the male 
nature. The average man is no doubt shy and timid 
in spiritual matters, but that he is any less open to 
spiritual appeal than his wife or sister I do not in the 
least believe. He is deeply influenced by spiritual truth, 
but he is awkward in his expression of it unless he be 
carefully instructed. His education in the business 
world and his career there tend to make him material- 
istic, and his constant experience builds up a wall be- 
tween him and religious activity ; but once break down 
the wall, once show him the possibility of spiritual ex- 
perience for him, and he is most responsive. I may 
have been particularly fortunate, but I have never found 
any lack of sincere and deep religion in men and boys 
in any parish in which I have worked; but I have found, 
I think, that men are rather afraid of the clergy and 
the clergy rather afraid to approach men as spiritual 
beings. 


136 The Parish Priest 


One means of approach is the quiet day for men, 
which I, like other priests, have found it quite easy 
to organize. J have no doubt that a wider retreat work 
among men can be successfully organized if means can 
be provided for it. By ‘‘means’’ I am thinking of suit- 
able houses for retreat. At present experiment is being 
made in that direction, with good promise of success. 
The chief difficulty in the organization of the quiet day — 
for men is the difficulty of time. Men’s occupations 
are such that they cannot be got together on any day. 
The attempts that I myself have made have been to 
use holidays. There is, of course, a difficulty about 
having a retreat on a holiday, but the difficulty is not 
SO serious as one may imagine. Men, we think, will not 
be willing to give up one of their holidays to go into an 
all-day retreat, but, as a matter of fact, they have proved 
in my experience to be, many of them, quite willing; not 
all, of course—not, especially when a holiday falls on 
Monday and when there are practically three holidays 
as a result—but I never have failed to get together a 
goodly number of men on Washington’s Birthday. 
Curiously and unexpectedly, the chief obstacle arises, 
not from the man, as one would Suppose would be the 
case, but, in the case of married men, from the wife. 
It is not unusual that the husband is unable to attend 
the quiet day, not because he is unwilling to give up 
the holiday, but because his wife is unwilling. ‘‘It is so 
rarely that she can have Charles for a whole day to 
herself.’’ 

There is no difference in the technique of the quiet day 
for men from that for women. The same time table serveg 
in both cases; and there is here no difficulty about the 
silence or the dropping in. A man who starts to keep a 


The Parish Priest 1 b's 


retreat is very much in earnest and wants to get all he 
can out of it. The same meditations wil] hardly serve 
for the two retreats. The conductor must put the truths 
he has to expand in a masculine guise. He can make 
the retreat as stiff as he likes, and as_ straight 
out as he likes, and he will be sure of atten- 
tion and response. He can carry his group of busi- 
ness men into the heart of the sacramental life, and they 
will follow him there without difficulty. In order to talk 
effectively to men it is almost essential that the conductor 
shall have had a good deal of experience as a confessor 
of men. I fancy that a great many of the blunders 
that priests make in dealing with men are due to the 
fact that they only know men in the country club, and 
not in the confessional. 

A work almost wholly neglected among us, up to the 
present time, is that of retreats for children. Enough, 
however, has been done to demonstrate their possibility 
and value. Here,as in most cases in dealing with chil- 
dren, the obstacle is not the child but the parent. In 
attempting to teach children religion, the priest is some- 
times almost driven to the socialistic theory of taking 
the child away from the parent and educating it by the 
state. The child is wonderful and fascinating material 
to deal with, but the problem is to catch the child. 
Soon we shall not be able to catch him even for an 
hour on Sunday. The motor and the week-end are 
penetrating deeper and deeper into society. Parents 
today are wailing over the anarchistic tendencies of 
the younger generation which they themselves have de- 
liberately debauched. A children’s retreat is usually 
attempted on Saturday; but then the poorer child has 
to work and the well-to-do child has to play or to go to 


138 The Parish Priest 


the dancing class or has been promised an afternoon at 
the movies, and so on and so on, and there you are! 

I am inclined to think that instead of placing a 
children’s retreat on Saturday, which is inconvenient 
for the priest in many respects, it will be better to 
take some other day in the week. For one thing, you 
will be sure of an enthusiastic response from the child, 
who is always glad to do anything to get out of going > 
to school—a very good comment, by the way, on the 
failure of the school to interest any one. The parents 
will not resist this any more than any other day, prob- 
ably less. The school authorities can also be dealt with. 
After all, children are not yet quite chattel slaves of 
the state, though they are rapidly approaching that 
status. 

The arrangements for a children’s retreat are, of 
course, somewhat different from those for a retreat for 
adults. It is best to have quiet days for boys and girls 
separately. The age I am thinking of is from twelve 
to fifteen. Older boys and girls of sixteen to twenty 
should have days of their own. For the younger set 
with whom I am now concerned, I do not advise an 
early Mass for communions, but a Mass—preferably a 
sung Mass, sung, that is, by the children themselves— 
at say nine o’clock. This eliminates the need for break- 
fast and makes lunch the only meal needed. The or- 
dering of the day will, of course, vary with circumstances. 
I am suggesting one that I have found to work well. 

The opening address will be at the Mass, which means 
that the Mass, if sung, will last about an hour. From 
ten-thirty to twelve it is well that the children should 
prepare and make their confessions. Those who are not 
so engaged can be read to or talked to informally. At 


The Parish Priest 139 


twelve, lunch, during which there will be reading. Neale’s 
Stories of the Saints are admirable for this purpose. 
There should be quiet after lunch til] one o’clock, and 
then it would be well to have a recreation hour. This 
permits relaxation and prepares the children for the 
afternoon. The hours from two to four are devoted to 
hymns and short addresses. At Saint Mary’s, where we 
have a number of altars, we conduct during the two hours 
what we call a pilgrimage. The altars are dressed and 
lighted, and we go from one to the other about the 
church singing, and at each altar have short prayers 
and an address. This constant movement and change 
prevents the children from getting tired and leaves them 
in good spirits at the end. We close the day with 
Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, I see no reason 
why, in a church without more than one altar, temporary 
stations of some sort cannot be arranged as places for 
the addresses. The children, of course, sit during the 
addresses. As this work among children is, in this 
country at any rate, in an early stage, I am appending 
to this chapter an outline of a children’s retreat which 
I hope may be suggestive. 

The children’s retreat is naturally much more difficult 
to handle than retreats for adults. If it is to be suc- 
cessful it needs careful working up in all its details. 
Children should be selected and prepared well before- 
hand. If it be possible to interest the parents, this 
should be done. Addresses should be very carefully 
thought out and illustrated and each one brought to a 
definite point of contact with child life. As one is 
starting a child on a new line of religious experience 
that may lead far if properly developed, it is. of the 
utmost importance that there should be no failure. An 


140 The Parish Priest 


impulse and direction may be given to the child’s 
spiritual life of which he will long feel the influence. 
A very definite spiritual experience is possible for the 
child, and that possibility must be treated with all seri- 
ousness. We cannot estimate the good that can be done 
by the development of retreat work among children; but 
it must be understood that it is very difficult work 
which had better not be approached except by those 
who have tested their capacity to interest children and 
have prepared themselves in detail for the work. 

In fact, this work of retreats, in all its aspects, pre- 
supposes carefully trained conductors. Imperfect 
preparation in a sermon may occasionally be pardoned, 
it is in fact inevitable, but imperfect preparation of a 
retreat is unpardonable. We have no right to invite 
people to give up a day or a week-end and then waste 
the day because of slovenly work. I have known a 
priest, when setting out to give a retreat, rush into the 
study of a friend and borrow a set of notes on which to 
base his talks. He was a fluent talker and no doubt 
bluffed it through with some success, but nevertheless 
it was the sort of thing that ought not to be done. I 
have been at retreats which obviously had not been 
prepared in the way of carefully worked out notes, but 
merely turned over in the priest’s mind, in the form of a 
general line of thought. The result was that, while the 
first part of the retreat got on fairly well, as soon as the 
conductor became tired his mind ceased to work well 
and you felt the creaking of the machinery, and the 
result was a distinct let-down. That is disastrous be- 
_ cause, for one reason, the retreatants are growing tired 
and need to be helped and not to be pulled down with 
the struggling mind of the leader. I am very strongly 


The Parish Priest 141 


of the opinion that, no matter what facility a man may 
have in address, he should at least make clear outlines 
of his meditations to insure that he has something to 
say and that it is worth saying; and this is important 
from another angle, because it is only by such careful 
preparation that the priest can adequately illustrate his 
material. 

In beginning a retreat work in a parish, one may very 
likely have to begin with small things. Only a few 
will answer our appeal, but if the work is rightly done 
it is sure to grow, and people will find that they can 
gain from a retreat what they cannot well gain else- 
where. A priest who can give effective retreats will 
find in them a work which brings great satisfaction 
and which offers him opportunities which he will with 
difficulty find elsewhere. 

And I may once more emphasize what I have dwelt 
upon in other connections, the vital need of the under- 
standing of spiritual theology by the priest who aspires 
to conduct retreats. Both dogmatics and morals will 
have their place in retreat meditations, but they will 
come in in subordination to the theory of the spiritual 
life. We are aiming at the spiritual development, the 
developed experience of Christians, and this can effec- 
tively be done only by those who are skilled interpreters 
of spiritual science. A great conductor of retreats is 
a spiritual artist of a high order. We cannot all hope to 
attain that degree of perfection; but any priest, by study 
and in the light of his own experience interpreting that 
study, ought to make himself competent in the matter. 
There is no more useful work to which he can devote 
himself. 


142 


The Parish Priest 


Retreat for Children 


The First Period. (9-10) 


Sung Mass and Address. 


IJ. The Second Period. (10-12) 


Instruction by the Sisters. Rosary or Reading. 
Include in this period preparation for and mak- 
ing confessions. 


III. The Third Period. (12-1) 


Lunch and rest. 


The Fourth Period. (1-2) 


Recreation. 


The Fifth Period. (2-3:30) 


The Pilgrimage. 


IV. 

Vi. 
A. 
B. 
C. 
D. 
K. 


First Station. 

The Font. Baptistry trimmed with flowers. Ad- 
dress, hymn, renew baptismal vows. 

Second Station. 

The Lady Chapel vested in red. Hymn. Ad- 
dress on Confirmation. 

Dedication to the Holy Spirit as Spirit of purity. 

Third Station. 

S. Joseph’s Chapel, vested in purple. Hymn. 
Address on Penance. Acts of contrition. 

Fourth Station. 

High Altar, vested in white. Hymn. Address 
on Eucharist. Acts of faith, hope and love. 

Fifth Station. 

Chantry vested in black. Hymn. Address on 
Unction. Prayer for a good death. 


VI. The Sixth Period. (3:30-4) 


The Lady Chapel. Vested in white. Exposi- 
tion and Thanksgiving. 


CHAPTER XI 
Tue Priest As Pastor 


THE pastoral side of the work of a priest is admirably 
set forth in the Prayer Book Form for the Ordination of 
Priests. There the Bishop exhorts those who are to 
be ordained to have in remembrance unto how high a 
dignity and to how weighty an office and charge they 
are called: 


That is to say, to be Messengers, Watchmen, and 
Stewards of the Lord; to teach, and to premonish, to 
feed and provide for the Lord’s family; to seek for 
Christ’s sheep that are dispersed abroad, and for his 
children that are in the midst of this naughty world, 
that they may be saved through Christ forever. 


Later on the Bishop exhorts them as follows: 


See that ye never cease your labor, your care and 
diligence, until ye have done all that lieth in you, ac- 
cording to your bounden duty, to bring all such as are 
or shall be committed to your charge, unto that agree- 
ment in the faith and knowledge of God, and to that 
ripeness and perfectness of age in Christ, and that there 
be no place left among you, either for error in religion, 
or for viciousness in life. 


Here we have, clearly and concisely depicted, the 
pastoral ideal. The priest, to whom has been committed 
the cure of souls, must conscientiously strive to bring 
all who are within the reach of his influence into effec- 
tive union with our Lord. This is not to be done pri- 
marily through preaching, but through individual love 
and care. The faithful shepherd ‘‘calleth his own sheep 
by name and leadeth them out.’’ ‘‘He goeth before them, 
and the sheep follow him; for they know his voice.’’? He 
is urged always to keep before him the example of his 


144 The Parish Priest 


Lord, who said: ‘‘l am the good shepherd, and know my 
sheep, and am known of mine. As the Father knoweth 
me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my 
life for the sheep.’’ 

It is this personal contact with human souls that is 
one of the most influential factors in the priest’s work, 
so far as his external activities are concerned. His 
prayer life, of course, comes first in importance. It is 
a common and excusable misconception of the duty of 
a priest which lays stress chiefly upon his adminis- 
trative obligations, the organization of his parish, or 
even upon his preaching. But unless he can become the 
respected and trusted friend of most of the men and 
women and children in his parish, he will never achieve 
or maintain any deep or lasting influence in their lives. 

Broadly speaking, there are two ways in which the 
priest may carry on his work with individuals: one is 
by going to see them, and the other is by inducing 
them to come to see him. I propose to consider these 
two methods in turn and to suggest under each head 
some of the difficulties that stand in the way, and how 
they may be overcome. Human nature being what it is, 
and the conditions of modern life, especially in our cities, 
being so complicated, it is by no means so simple a 
problem as it may appear on paper, either to go to see 
people or to make it possible for them to come to see us. 

First, let us consider the duty of the priest to go out 
among his people and become intimately acquainted with 
them in their homes. We are often urged in books on 
pastoral work to make regular and systematic house to 
house visitations in our parishes. That sounds sensible 
and practicable, but have we realized the enormous ob- 
stacles that stand in the way? If a priest goes out for 


The Parish Priest 145 


an afternoon to make pastoral calls on about ten dif- 
ferent families or individuals, he will find possibly two 
of them at home. Most of them are either at work or 
in school or out for a walk or visiting friends or shop- 
ping or attending the matinee or the movies. This 
situation has reference chiefly, of course, to the women 
and children, for one does not expect to find men at 
home during the afternoon. Occasionally one is fortu- 
nate enough to find the head of the family at home and 
has an interesting chat with him and his wife. It is 
always a surprise in a city like New York to see how 
many men are apparently at leisure at all hours of the 
day. Some of them doubtless are out of jobs and some 
of them work nights; but the vast numbers of them in 
our parks and squares and on the streets and in the 
theaters and at baseball games during the afternoon, 
indicate that there are more gentlemen of leisure in 
the community than one ordinarily supposes. And then 
too, the number of women who are the bread winners of 
the family is amazing. Therefore under modern urban 
conditions one is almost as likely to find a man at home 
in the afternoon as his wife. Theoretically, it would be 
an admirable thing to call in the evening when one may 
find the whole family at home. There again the facts 
do not often fit the theory. In the first place, people 
are just as likely to be out in the evening as in the 
afternoon; and in the second place it is difficult for 
a priest to find enough free evenings in the week to 
make any calls. After subtracting the evenings on 
which he must be in or about the church for services 
or to attend guild meetings or classes of instruction, 
and the evenings on which he is invited out to dinner 
by kind parishioners, there are often no evenings left 


146 The Parish Priest 


for parochial visiting. Another handicap in the way 
of house to house visiting is that almost every day a 
busy parish priest is obliged to make special calls on 
people who are ill or in some trouble or anxiety, or he 
must attend to pressing parochial business. He is in- 
deed fortunate if two or three afternoons of the week 
are not taken up with committee meetings of one kind 
or another. That seems to be one of the favorite forms 
of passing the time in these days of organization and 
efficiency. 

In spite of the difficulties, however, it is the highest 
pastoral wisdom for a priest to attempt every year to 
make a house to house visitation of his parish, even 
though it results only in his leaving his card at the door, 
or ascertaining the latest address to which the family 
or individual has moved. At any rate, his parishioners 
will know that he has displayed sufficient interest in them 
to hunt them up; and it is comforting and reassuring to 
Church people to know that their pastor is looking after 
them and really keeps them in his thoughts and prayers. 

The other way in which the priest is to maintain 
individual contact with his people is by making it pos- 
sible for them to come to see him. Many of our clergy 
do this by keeping regular office hours. If that plan 
works well, it is justified. I am convinced that it often 
supplies an opportunity for kind-hearted priests to be 
exploited by cranks or feeble-minded or insane persons. 
The people that he really wants to reach do not come to 
his office. I have found through an experience of many 
years that by being in church without fail every Satur- 
day afternoon from four until six and every Saturday 
evening, and on the days before great festivals, many 
people will come to me with their questions, perplexi- 


The Parish Priest 147 


ties, doubts, and troubled consciences. Special appoint- 
ments may be made at other times for those who cannot 
come on Saturdays. 

There is a distinct value in seeing people in the church. 
It is much less embarrassing for most human beings 
to sit behind a priest in a pew in a dimly lighted church 
than it is to sit face to face with him in his study or 
office, often brilliantly lighted. There igs an added safe- 
guard in choosing the church as the place for the inter- 
view when women are concerned. We must avoid every 
appearance of evil; and it often happens that a priest 
lays himself and his profession open to suspicion when 
he receives women in his study or office for private 
interviews. It is far better for him and his reputation 
and far more comfortable for the women themselves, if 
they talk to him in church where people are going and 
coming and no possible suspicion can arise in their minds. 
Even in the case of men the church may be the best 
place. A man will often talk more freely to a priest 
in church than when face to face with him in his study. 
There are no doubt many men who, as the priest knows 
well, can best be received in his study. <A friendly 
evening visit with a young man before the fire or under 
the green shaded lamp in the priest’s library may quite 
possibly prove the turning point in the young man’s life. 

In all these cases the priest must beware of doing 
all the talking himself. He must cultivate the art of 
listening. For more good will ensue when people talk 
freely of their special intellectual perplexities or spiritual 
needs than when the priest delivers a long harangue or 
lectures them on their duty. It is strange how often 
the mere description of a vexing situation brings relief. 
One who may be wholly in the dark about his duty may 


148 The Parish Priest 


find after he has explained the circumstances in detail 
that his duty becomes perfectly plain to him. 

There is another way in which people may come to 
see us, and that is in the various guilds and classes 
which are conducted in every well organized parish. In 
such meetings the priest often finds a brief opportunity 
to speak to individuals, and while standing for a few — 
minutes’ conversation they may unload what is on their 
minds and he may be inspired to give just the needed 
word of advice or help which will enable them to face 
more confidently a trying obligation. 

It may seem to many a ridiculously trivial matter 
to insist upon a priest always wearing his cassock and 
often his biretta when he confers with individuals in 
the church or in his study, or when he visits the guilds. 
The clothes, of course, do not make a man of God. But 
a cassock and biretta do impress upon people the fact 
that they are talking with an authoritative representa- 
tive of the Church; in other words, with a Catholic priest, 
rather than with a gentlemanly scholar or a cultivated 
man of the world. It is an excellent rule for a priest 
to put on his cassock when he dresses in the morning, 
and remove it only when he goes out on the streets. 
It will protect him from many insidious dangers and 
will make his words ten times more potent in their 
influence over human lives. 

This whole question of influence is fundamental in the 
pastoral life of the priest. How can we influence people 
so that they may be saved through Christ forever? 
How shall we appeal to them: through the reason or 
through the emotions? Is it true that we can appeal to 
men more strongly through the reason and to women 
through the emotions? Probably not, for men are not 


The Parish Priest 149 


so different from women as that. Some men, like some 
women, can be reached best through their reason: but 
some men, like some women, are peculiarly sensitive to 
an emotional appeal. The truth is that neither reason 
nor the emotions offer the best channels of approach 
to their wills: and we must never forget that it is the 
will that must be changed. People always do what they 
most strongly want to do. If what they want to do is 
wrong, the problem is how to make them want instead 
to do what is right. The masters of the spiritual life 
appear to believe that the most powerful lever by which 
we may act upon the will is the imagination. That 
is why so much use is made of the imagination in 
mental prayer or meditation. In our pastoral contacts, 
we must try to awaken the imagination of those whom 
we are trying to influence so that it will picture vividly 
the ultimate results of a wrong course of action and 
with equal vividness the results of the choice which a 
Christian ought to make. We must help them to 
visualize the completed action. The writer of Ecclesias- 
ticus has put it tersely: ‘‘ Whatsoever thou takest in hand, 
remember the end, and thou shalt never do amiss.’’ 
(Eecclus. VII:36) This is good ascetic theology, and good 
psychology as well. 

A knowledge of modern psychology ought to be a 
valuable asset to a priest who is striving to lead the 
people committed to his charge to that ripeness and 
perfectness of age in Christ, of which the Bishop spoke 
in his exhortation. The analysis of the unconscious 
mind which we owe to modern psychologists ought to 
throw much light upon the hidden motives that sway 
people’s lives. We may not feel that we can accept all 
the conclusions of the psychoanalysts, and no doubt the 


150 | The Parish Priest 


views of the authorities on psychology are constantly 
changing. What is taught dogmatically by Freud and 
Jung to-day may be scornfully rejected by their disciples 
next year. Nevertheless, a good treatise on religion and 
psychology or on the working of the unconscious mind, 
would supply many valuable suggestions to the priest 
who is laboring for the welfare of human souls. 
Sooner or later a priest learns by experience that 
many of the people who come to him with their troubles 
and difficulties are in a run down state of health and 
and that their sad mental and spiritual state may be 
traced to toxic poisoning, or some functional disorder 
of the nervous system, or defective glands, or what not. 
It is futile for the priest to attempt to prescribe merely 
moral or spiritual remedies for such ailments. He should 
induce the sufferer to consult some good physician or 
neurologist who can make a thorough physical examina- 
tion and diagnosis and indicate the course of treatment 
which will restore the patient to normal conditions. Tt 
is no doubt true that in the meantime religion may 
help a spiritually minded patient to bear up under his 
physical suffering or make allowances for his jaundiced 
view of life. Possibly the application of the grace of 
God through the sacraments may aid in his physical 
recovery. There is no reason why the priest should not 
cooperate with a wise and skilful physician in trying 
to bring about perfect soundness both within and with- 
out in all who are ailing in body or mind. It would be 
a mistake to urge them to rely only on medical science. 
It would be equally a mistake to persuade them to have 
nothing to do with doctors and to rely only upon spiritual 
means of recovery. A physician ideally should be a 
minister of God quite as much as a priest; only his 


The Parish Priest 151 


function relates primarily to the body, while the priest 
must diagnose and prescribe for the diseases of the soul. 
Obviously it is easier to think of a physician as a 
minister of God, when he is a man of faith and prayer. 


CHAPTER XII 
SINNERS AND CoNnFESSION 


Just as the priest has a special duty towards the sick 
among his parishioners, so he is under obligation to 
seek out those who are living in sin, and to do what 
lies in his power to bring them to a true repentance. This 
applies not only to those who strictly belong to his parish, 
but to all who are within the sphere of his influence. Cer- 
tainly if we are sharing the priesthood of Him who 
came to seek and to save that which is lost, we can- 
not be content to minister simply to the respectable 
and the proud who think they have no need of repent- 
ance. We must go out after the lost sheep, whether 
in the high places or the low places of this world. The 
unscrupulous capitalist, the dissolute society woman, 
the college professor who scoffs at religion, are lost 
sheep quite as much as the prostitute, the drug fiend, 
the drunkard, or the bootlegger. There is no respect 
of persons with God. 

When our Lord was criticized for associating with 
sinners He declared that the Son of Man came not to 
call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. He ap- 
parently could do nothing with the contented and the 
self-satisfied who were righteous in their own eyes. He 
sought to win for citizenship in His Kingdom those who 
knew they were sinners and craved the divine forgive- 
ness. Out of such material He could make saints. We 
may feel assured that the mind of Christ has not changed 
with the passing years. He still seeks for the humble and 
meek, the poor-spirited, the hungry and the conscience- 
stricken, that He may transform them into the children 


The Parish Priest eres 


of God and heirs of the Kingdom. The priest, then, 
should make it his special mission to seek out all within 
the limits of his cure who are troubled about their 
sins. This group doubtless will include some interesting 
and attractive people, but it will be made up mostly of 
those who cannot fail to be repulsive and loathsome to 
a very fastidious person. It will also include the 
scrupulous, most of whom are really not sinners at all, 
but think they are the chief of sinners. The priest 
will soon learn to put this difficult class in a category 
by themselves as requiring unusual treatment. 

There are not many perhaps in the average parish 
who are troubled by their sins. If this is the case 
it does not speak well for the preaching in that parish. 
One of the purposes for which the Holy Spirit came to 
dwell in the Church was to convict the world of sin. If 
the Holy Spirit is inspiring our preaching the conviction 
of sin should follow as one of its chief consequences. 
A preacher should ask himself whether he prays as much 
as he should while he is planning his sermon and before 
going into the pulpit, that the Holy Spirit may give 
him the power to rouse the consciences of his hearers. 
It may be that the chief obstacle is in the preacher 
himself. Is he humble and sincere in his penitence? 
Does he resort regularly to the sacrament of penance 
for the forgiveness of his own sins, or is there a secret 
chamber in his heart the door of which is barred against 
the entrance of his Saviour? Whatever may be the 
cause, we may be reasonably certain that when there 
are few or no people in a parish who acknowledge 
themselves sinners and in need of the divine forgive- 
ness, it is a serious reflection on the character and 
work of the rector and his assistants. 


154 The Parish Priest 


Assuming then that there are among our people 
many sinners who are waiting to be shown the way to 
repentance, what is our duty toward them? Plainly, 
it is to teach them how to make a good repentance in 
order that we may convey to them one of the greatest 
gifts within our power—the gift of absolution. Our 
Lord instituted the sacrament of penance on the day of 
His Resurrection, when He said to His Apostles, ‘‘As 
my Father hath sent me, even so send I you... Re- 
ceive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose soever sins ye remit, 
they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins 
ye retain, they are retained.’’ By these words our 
Lord gave the powers of His priesthood to His Church. 
Ever since then whenever a bishop has ordained a 
man priest he has bestowed upon him the power to 
remit or retain sins. In the form for ordering priests 
in our Book of Common Prayer the bishop says at the 
moment of laying on his hands: ‘‘Receive the Holy 
Ghost for the Office and Work of a Priest in the Church 
of God, now committed unto thee by the Imposition 
of our hands. Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are 
forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are re- 
tained.’’ That priest goes out into the parish to which 
he is appointed endowed with power from on high. When 
he pronounces the words, ‘‘By His authority committed 
unto me I absolve thee from all thy sins; in the name 
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,”’ 
he conveys the divine forgiveness to the penitent sin- 
ner as surely and completely as he does when he ad- 
ministers Holy Baptism to a penitent adult. 

It should not be forgotten that the power which our 
Lord gave to His Apostles and their successors was the 
power not only to remit sins, but also to retain them. 


The Parish Priest 155 


This implies that the priest is to sit as judge and hear 
confessions. Only by hearing the sinner confess his sins 
to God can he determine whether the sinner is truly 
contrite and has a firm purpose of amendment. If the 
priest is to hear confessions he should assign a definite 
time for the work and let it be known to all that he 
may always be found in the church at that time. He 
should always, except in cases of sickness, hear confes- 
sions in the open church or in a confessional. His study 
or the sacristy are not suitable places for sinners to 
confess their sins. Even when confessions are made in 
the open church there will always be suspicious persons 
who will cast aspersions on this sacramental means of 
grace. Let us avoid all appearance of evil. Moreover, 
many will come at a regular hour when they see others 
coming who would never have the courage to ask for 
special appointments. All sorts of strangers and people 
from other parishes will avail themselves of the op- 
portunity. Even if the priest be compelled to sit in 
the church or the confessional for an hour or two while 
nobody comes, his time may profitably be spent in prayer, 
meditation, spiritual reading, or composing a sermon. 
How shall we induce our people to make their confes- 
sions when they have never done so or when they do not 
make them as often as they should? I imagine the 
most effective means is by praying for them by name. 
But we should never fail to take every reasonable op- 
portunity to speak to them individually about making 
their confessions. But we should be careful not to speak 
to them on this subject before others. We may casually 
refer to the sacrament of penance when we call upon 
them or meet them accidentally on the street or in the 
church. Naturally, we should be tactful and gentle in 


156 The Parish Priest 


our method of approach. We should not give the 
impression that we have an obsession on this subject. 
It need not be our sole topic of conversation. But by 
keeping it always in the back of our minds and referring 
to it when an opening is supplied we may often remove 
difficulties or misunderstandings which are keeping peo- 
ple away from their confessions. In appealing to our 
parishioners to resort to the sacrament of penance it is 
better not to base our appeal on a selfish motive, such 
as that it will relieve their conscience or make them 
happy or even save their souls from hell; much less 
should we appeal to them to make their confessions 
to please us. Let us appeal frankly to the highest 
motive of all, the glory of God. It is really the only 
way that a soul can glorify God, for in confession he 
freely, openly and lovingly acknowledges that God was 
right and he was wrong. Contrition, which is necessary 
for forgiveness, means sorrow for having offended the 
infinite love of God. To confess our sins because we 
love God insures.true contrition. 

The self-examination that is the requisite preparation 
for a good confession is by no means an easy task. It 
is especially difficult before a first confession. Those 
who are preparing for their first confession should be 
carefully instructed by a priest or a sister in the methods 
of self-examination. The work should not be hurried. 
First confessions made after a few moment’s hasty self- 
examination are worse than useless. They are either 
long autobiographies, well-intended attempts to white- 
wash one’s character, accounts of one’s sorrows 
and misfortunes, catalogues of one’s virtues, or 
an exposition of one’s present state of mind; any- 
thing but a confession of the sins of one’s past life. 


The Parish Priest TY: 


It is probably not wise to say anything to the penitent 
about the distinction between mortal and venial sins. 
It only confuses the mind of the ordinary Christian and 
such fine-spun distinctions often destroy people’s faith 
in the sacrament of penance. The thing for them to do 
is to confess all the really serious sins they can remem- 
ber. The difference between mortal and venial sins is 
mainly for the guidance of the confessor. 

It is to be feared that not many of our. clergy possess 
all of the qualifications requisite for good confessors. 
A confessor should be loving, patient, and sympathetic, 
but not mushy and sentimental. With men, as a rule, 
and with children, he may be as gentle and kindly as he 
likes, but with women and with scrupulous penitents of 
either sex he must be firm and unyielding, even to the 
point of severity. In dealing with the sins of the average 
penitent sound common sense will be a sufficient guide, 
but there occasionally will arise moral problems of great 
intricacy which a priest cannot solve without an expert 
knowledge of moral theology. Such books on moral the- 
ology as those of Fr. Kenneth E. Kirk and Drs. Hall and 
Hallock should be in every priest’s library, if not also 
some good Roman authority such as Lehmkuhl, Slater, or 
Koch-Preuss. If the priest does not know how to an- 
swer a difficult question let him ask for time to look 
up the matter and promise to report the next time the 
person comes to confession. He should also be a con- 
stant student of expert works in mystical and ascetic 
theology that he may know how to guide and direct 
pious souls to the higher levels of the spiritual life. 

The regular hearing of confessions is one of the most 
valuable safeguards to the priest in his relations with 


158 The Parish Priest 


his people. He cannot go far wrong if he makes it a 
principle so to act towards them and with them that 
they will feel like coming to him with their sins. It is 
difficult to imagine women coming to a priest for con- 
fession if he has danced with them or men if he has 
gambled or become intoxicated in their company or 
anyone with whom he has lost his temper and quarreled. 
But if he has shown himself gentle and meek with all 
the men and has treated the older women as mothers and 
the younger women as sisters, there is no reason why 
ultimately the whole parish should not come to him for 
advice and absolution. An English priest who is Vicar 
of a large country parish is said to have sat in his 
confessional every Saturday evening for seven years be- 
fore anyone came. Then a small boy came and a few 
weeks later he brought another boy. Now the Saturday 
evening hours are hardly long enough to hear the many 
who come. 

It ought to be unnecessary to remind the clergy that 
they are not to assume the pharisaical attitude, as if 
they alone were righteous, and all their people sinners. 
The truth of course is that the clergy are sinners quite as 
much as the laity. They should refer to the Sacrament 
of Penance as something which they themselves have 
found helpful in their struggle with sin and temptation. 
It is the merest effrontery for a priest to urge his people 
to make their confessions, or even to hear confessions, if 
he is not himself resorting regularly and frequently 
to that sacrament. A good confessor is like a physician 
who urges us to adopt a way of living which he has 
found most beneficial to his health. He has tried his 
own medicine first. In general it is always more ef- 
fective when a priest says ‘‘we should’? than when he 


The Parish Priest 159 


says ‘‘you should.’’ This applies both to his sermons 
and his private conversation. 

In conclusion let us turn our attention to a few prac- 
tical matters connected with hearing confessions. In 
the confessional or place where confessions are made 
there should be a card containing the form of words to 
be used by the penitent. It ought to be as brief as 
possible, perhaps somewhat as follows: 


Since my last confession which was (date) I remember 
these sins: (here mention the sins you can remember. ) 
For these and all the other sins I cannot remember I 
am very sorry. I will try not to sin again, and I ask 
the forgiveness of God and penance, advice, and absolu- 
tion of you, my Father. 

There should also be a crucifix before the eyes of the 
penitent. The priest wears a violet stole and his biretta. 
He hears the confession attentively and patiently, asks 
any question that may be necessary to make sure of the 
proper disposition of the penitent, gives such advice as 
he is able, assigns a suitable penance and pronounces 
absolution. It is often a good plan in assigning a pen- 
ance to give the penitent a printed slip of paper con- 
taining such things as the Acts of Faith, Hope and 
Love, or the Anima Christi, or the Universal Prayer or 
the ‘‘Remember, Christian Soul.’’ If these are of the 
proper size they can be inserted in the private book of 
devotions for further use. 


CHAPTER XIII 
THE PERFECTING OF THE SAINTS 


Happy is the parish that comprises within its member- 
ship a group of real saints. In view of the fact that 
the Church is composed of the baptized and that the 
baptized are all called to be saints, there must be some- 
thing radically wrong with any parish that contains 
no saints, for that would mean that it was wholly given 
over to the ancient enemies of the soul, the world, the 
flesh, and the devil. 

What do we mean by a saint? Obviously we mean 
one who takes seriously the vows of his baptism. He 
has renounced the devil and all his works, the pomps 
and vanities of this wicked world, and all the sinful 
lusts of the flesh; he believes all the articles of the Faith 
as contained in the Apostles’ Creed; he is sincerely try- 
ing to keep God’s holy will and commandments and 
to walk in the same to his life’s end. Stated in other 
terms, a saint is one who has a wholehearted hatred 
of sin as an outrage against God’s holiness and love; 
who bravely confesses Christ and bears witness to the 
Catholic Faith in the midst of an unbelieving world; 
who shows in his daily life a spirit of self-abnegation 
and a willingness to bear the cross; who displays not 
merely resignation to God’s will, but an enthusiastic 
determination to see that it is carried out; who is 
zealous for the extension of the Church; who expresses 
his love for the brethren in unselfish and humble ser- 
vice; and who is easily distinguished in this wretched 
and sordid world by his gladness of heart and unfail- 
ing spiritual joy. Once again, we might describe a 


The Parish Priest 161 


saint as one who exhibits in his daily life the character 
set forth by our Lord in the Beatitudes, which presents 
so marked a contrast to the character esteemed by 
worldly people. 

The parish priest must face the fact that he has definite 
obligations toward the saints who are under his care. 
First of all, he must inspire and hearten them by walk- 
ing in the way of perfection himself. He may not hope to 
attain to their advanced states of spiritual experience, 
but so long as he is striving to live in daily union with 
his Lord he belongs to their company, and they will 
recognize in him a congenial spirit to whom they may 
look for encouragement, consolation, and sympathy, if 
not always for guidance and leadership. The priest 
who is not in any way interested in their aims and 
aspirations ought to resign from the ministry and be- 
come a school-teacher or a traveling salesman, or fill 
some other useful post in the community. 

The saints will probably want to come to their parish 
priest for confession unless they have long been at- 
tached to some other confessor, who has proved a wise 
father in God. In that case, he will want to know some- 
thing about the methods of spiritual direction. He 
should be familiar with such books as Baker’s Holy 
Wisdom, St. Francis de Sales’ Devout Life, Scaramelli’s 
Directorium Asceticum, Poulain’s Practice of Interior 
Prayer, and so forth. It would be presumptuous for 
him to attempt to guide and advise such souls simply 
from the meagre wisdom gained by his own experience, 
especially if he is very young. The experience of a 
godly priest in the sixties may quite possibly enable 
him to direct souls wisely without his having formally 
studied ascetic theology. This whole subject, however, 


162 The Parish Priest 


will be gone into more fully in the following chapter, 
and therefore it is not necessary for me to say anything 
further about it. 

Entirely apart, however, from hearing the confessions 
of the pious and godly members of his congregation, the 
parish priest must take an interest in providing for 
their spiritual and intellectual needs. Above all, he 
must supply them with the priceless privilege of a daily 
mass. It is by no means a simple matter to establish a 
daily mass in a parish in which such a custom has never 
prevailed. Some priests think all that is necessary is 
that they should go to the church and celebrate the 
Eucharist daily whether anyone comes or not. This is 
just the way not to do it, not only because it is con- 
trary to the best Catholic custom for a priest to say 
Mass with no one to assist him, but also because people 
will get the idea that the priest is acting as their rep- 
resentative and therefore their presence is superfluous. 
It is better to select six or more promising boys and 
teach them to serve at the altar. Each one can be ap- 
pointed for a particular day in the week, and it should 
be impressed upon each boy that it depends upon him 
whether there is a mass on his day or not. He can 
take breakfast with the priest afterwards so that he 
may get to school on time. Having thus established 
a daily mass with no great strain on the parish the 
priest should hunt out a dozen or so of his more devout 
men and women and urge them to pledge themselves 
to be present every week on the days most convenient 
for them. With such a beginning it will not be long 
before a goodly congregation will be found in church 
every morning. This will be the nucleus of a company 
of saints who will be the salt of the parish to preserve 


The Parish Priest 163 


it from corruption. When other devout Church people 
move into the parish they will rejoice to find this op- 
portunity already provided to satisfy daily their deepest 
spiritual needs. 

The priest should not wholly ignore the more pious 
members of his congregation in his Sunday sermons. 
Though he must preach chiefly to the worldly and uncon- 
verted, including many who are virtually unbelievers, 
he may profitably devote a part of every sermon to 
those who are living on a higher plane; sometimes a 
whole sermon may be devoted to them. Such a sermon 
may spur some men or women of the world into doing 
something for their spiritual life. It may open their eyes 
to the existence of that land of far distances of which 
they have sometimes dreamed. This, however, is not 
enough. The priest should give a weekly meditation on 
a week day afternoon or evening for those who are 
seriously interested in mystical religion. In cities per- 
haps the noon hour could be utilized for such a medita- 
tion. It is unfortunate that so much of the noon day 
preaching in downtown city churches should be based on 
the assumption that the congregations are entirely made 
up of those who are bored with religion. How admir- 
able it would be if thirty or forty business men and 
women who are striving to live the spiritual life under 
trying conditions could be gathered before the Blessed 
Sacrament in a quiet chapel at the noon hour for a half 
hour meditation with no hymns and no organ! 

There ought to be in every parish a lending library 
well stocked with books pertaining to the spiritual life, 
with ascetical and moral theology and biographies of 
the saints. Unfortunately (or shall I say fortunately?) 
not many of God’s saints are rich, and few of them can 


164 The Parish Priest 


afford to buy the kind of books they most need for their 
inspiration and development. The public libraries 
could hardly be expected to provide books of that char- 
acter, although one does not see why they should not 
minister to the needs of saints as well as of sinners. 
Perhaps it is one of the consequences of democracy that 
being governed by the rule of the majority our public 
libraries must contain books that are interesting only 
to sinners. 

Almost every parish is blessed with a few persevering 
and faithful souls who are aged and infirm or bed-ridden 
from some incurable ailment. Not that all bed-ridden 
people are saints; nor are all who are aged and infirm. 
Far from it! Those few who are saints will appreciate 
it greatly if their parish priest can come to them at 
frequent and regular intervals and communicate them 
with the Reserved Sacrament. They would feel that he 
was giving too much time to them if he were to cele- 
brate the Hucharist for them in their rooms, especially 
if he is single-handed and has a daily Mass in the church. 
But to carry the Reserved Sacrament to them is a 
simple task for him, while it means so much to them. 
These devout souls alone would seem to be sufficient 
justification for having the Blessed Sacrament reserved 
in every parish. 

These shut-in or aged parishioners may take a very 
useful part in the work of the Church by daily inter- 
cession. The priest should keep them supplied with 
names and causes for which their prayers are needed. 
Not only those who are shut in, but all who really love 
to pray should be utilized in this way. There ought 
to be in every parish a goodly band of these ‘‘Lord’s 
remembrancers, who give Him no rest day or night.”’ 


The Parish Priest 165 


Many of them would enjoy belonging to such interces- 
sion societies as the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacra- 
ment or the Guild of All Souls, which will supply them 
regularly with leafilets indicating the persons and objects 
for which their prayers are asked. 

Why are not all aged people in every parish saints? 
They should be if they have persevered in the practice 
of their religion, if they have fought a good fight, 
and have kept the faith. Every priest knows to his 
sorrow that there are very few saints among the aged. 
Doubtless there are severe temptations that come to old 
people which younger people little understand. It was 
evidently so in the early Church. St. Paul exhorts Titus 
to teach the aged men to be ‘‘vigilant, sober, grave, tem- 
perate, sound in faith, in charity, in patience; and the 
aged women likewise that they be in behaviour as be- 
cometh holy women, not false accusers, not given to 
much wine, teachers of good things.’’ (’) While the 
priest of to-day would hardly have the temerity to tell 
the aged men and women in his parish that they should 
cultivate these virtues, he may at any rate learn from 
this list of virtues what are the special temptations of 
the aged so that he may help them to overcome them. 
There is no experience more disheartening than to see 
an old man or woman who has long tried to live the 
Christian life fall away at the last; just as there is 
nothing more inspiring than the aged saint who is finish- 
ing his course with joy. 

It is not only among the aged that we are to look 
for saints, thank God! There are in every normal parish 
saints among the middle-aged and among the young, 
and in every social class. The saints that stand before 


the throne in heaven are gathered out of every nation 
(1) Titus 2:2-3. 


166 The Parish Priest 


and people and kindred and tongue. We must search for 
them diligently, for they will not make themselves known 
to us, and they sometimes wear strange disguises. We 
must look for them especially among the young men and 
young women, for it is quite likely that God is calling 
some of these younger saints to be priests or missionaries, 
monks or sisters. Not that every devout young man 
should be encouraged to study for Holy Orders, or every 
pious girl to enter the religious life. God needs saints 
in the home, in business, in society, if the world is not 
to become wholly corrupt. But it would be a sorry 
commentary on our priesthood if any of our young peo- 
ple remained unconscious of God’s call to the priesthood 
or to the religious life because of our failure to guide 
them aright. 

Is it not a primary obligation of the parish priest 
to make all of his people understand that they are called 
to be saints? It is surprising how few of our clergy 
make it their chief end to lead their people into the way 
of perfection. What is our chief aim? We should fre- 
quently ask ourselves that question in our self-examina- 
tions. Is it to be promoted to a mere prominent post 
with a larger salary? Is it to become known as eloquent 
preachers or able administrators? Is it to build up a 
strong parish which leads the diocese in the number 
of communicants and in annual expenditures? Is it to 
attract as many rich people as possible to be pew hold- 
ers? Is it to make our church the headquarters of the 
gay society weddings? Is it to have the finest choir or 
the most elaborate ceremonial in the city? Have we 
perhaps a thinly disguised ambition to be elected 
bishops? Or are we trying to bring as many people 
as possible into union with our divine Saviour and to 
induce them to strive for perfection? 


CHAPTER XIV 
Tue Priest As DIRECTOR 


Tur duty and the necessity of direction of souls are 
inherent in the priestly office. He who is entrusted by 
the Church with the cure of souls cannot avoid this 
responsibility. He will exercise some sort of direction 
just because he is rector of a parish. The only question 
is, how he will exercise it, through sermons and con- 
fidential talks or through the exercise of his office in 
the hearing of confessions. I am concerned here with 
direction in the latter sense, as it grows out of the 
relation of priest and penitent. 

There is, of course, no necessary connection between 
confession and direction, that is, the confessor is not of 
necessity the director of the penitent. One may go 
habitually to confession to one’s parish priest but resort 
to another priest for direction. Normally, however, 
the same priest will be both confessor and director, 
and a parishioner should not seek either outside the 
parish to which he belongs, unless under exceptional cir- 
cumstances. In the Anglican Communion, unfortunately, 
this is often necessary, either through the unwillingness 
of the parish priest to hear confessions or through his 
lack of education in those branches of theology which 
fit him to act as director. 

The priest will realize that of those who come to him 
for confession only a relatively few need direction. The 
average person, in coming to confession, comes for the 
forgiveness of sins and expects and needs only such 
advice as is suggested by the confession itself. Such a 
person aims to do God’s will and to keep His command- 
ments, to be more or less regular in the performance 


168 The Parish Priest 


of the routine duties of the Christian life, but has no 
aspiration beyond that. Our customary exhortations 
to perfection and the examples of the saints, as show- 
ing the way and the possibility of perfection, are not 
concerns of theirs. The most that the priest can do with 
such souls is to help them to hold fast to the Faith 
and be regular in the practice of the sacramental life. 

The call of the priest to act as director comes when 
he meets souls who have a true and deep desire for 
holiness, who have seen the vision of perfection and 
are eager to follow on. They whose eyes have been un- 
veiled to the Heavenly Vision will ask for help and 
guidance in the pursuit of it. They know what they 
seek, but they have discovered that the attainment of 
it means the traversing of a long road with which they 
are unfamiliar, and they want the instruction and advice 
which shall make the way plain and practicable for them. 
They have got beyond a negative conception of the Chris- 
tian life, as avoidance of offence, to the positive 
conception of it as living by principle. They therefore 
resort to one whom they think is an expert, for advice. 

Here, then, is the most delicate work that the priest 
has todo. He feels that the knowledge which has sufficed 
in the ordinary duties of his ministry is insufficient 
here. He needs expert knowledge of the details of the 
spiritual life which can come only from careful study 
and, in some measure at least, from practice. The 
qualities of a director are, to be sure, the qualities which 
all priests need for the adequate fulfilment of their 
priestly duties; but, while he can succeed fairly well 
in the routine exercise of priesthood with a minimum 
of these qualities, a high degree of them is needed to 
make him a good director. 


The Parish Priest 169 


Successful direction is essentially a cooperative work. 
Ordinary advice given in the confessional expects at- 
tention and obedience—cooperation to that extent—but 
the serious work of progress in the spiritual life requires 
that the direction of the priest should be met with an 
energetic effort on the part of the penitent to respond to 
and to carry out in detail the advice given. 

It is precisely here that the director is liable to find 
nis most difficult work, difficulty which will discourage 
him if he be not something of a psychologist. He is 
apt to assume that one who comes to him with an ap- 
parently serious desire to advance in the spiritual life 
and to ask his help in this matter will readily respond to 
his effort to aid; but in many cases, especially in the 
case of many women, this is not so. They are quite 
sincere in thinking that they want to advance in the 
spiritual life, they are perhaps still more sincere in 
thinking that they are advancing; but when they ask 
for counsel what they really want is appreciation. They 
want the priest’s sanction for doing what they have 
already made up their minds to do, and they want his 
praise for what they have done. 

The priest, being a man, is quite apt to be ignorant 
of the intricacies of feminine psychology, and will most 
likely pass through some difficult hours before he learn 
it. He is not likely to suspect that the pious lady 
who comes to him for direction has it in the back of 
her mind to direct him. She knows quite well what 
she wants and she expects to gain the approbation of 
her priest in the pursuit of it. 

The young priest, and sometimes the priest not so 
young, is apt to fall a victim to one or another modifica- 
tion of this type. Primarily she wants to talk confidenti- 


170 The Parish Priest 


ally about herself, so she seeks long talks, talks in which 
she lays bare her life. Before all else, she wants 
sympathy. I am not at all implying that she is not 
sincere, but she is quite ignorant of herself and doesn’t 
really want what she thinks she wants. The priest, 
feeling the responsibility of his office to be kindly and 
sympathetic, gives hours to sentimental converse, under 
the illusion that he is exercising his office as a director. — 

But let him not be led to this waste of time, if it 
be nothing worse. Let him not be led into this sort 
of intimate converse. If he shows himself to be what is 
called sympathetic, he will find that a small group of 
women will absorb an enormous amount of his time 
and that he will, in the end, not accomplish what he 
imagines he is accomplishing—advancing them in the 
way of holiness. 

An experienced director has wisely said: ‘‘No affec- 
tionate words, no tender appellations, no confidential 
talks that are not absolutely necessary, nothing expres- 
sive in look or gesture, not the least shade of familiarity, 
no more conversation than is absolutely necessary, as 
little as possible of direction outside the confessional, 
no letters. The less personal relation outside the con- 
fessional a woman has with her director the better.’ 
‘“‘The woman has the defect of her qualities; she is 
instinctively pious, but also she is instinctively proud 
of her piety. The toilet of her soul impresses her as 
much as that of her body. To know that she can adorn 
herself with virtues is ordinarily a danger for her.’’ 

The priest, therefore, should confine himself strictly 
to direction, and, as much as possible, confine himself 
to the confessional in giving it. If he does not do 
this, at least let him get clear to himself that long, 


The Parish Priest 171 


confidential talks have nothing to do with direction, 
and commonly little enough with religion. They are 
a form of sexual indulgence, though they seem to be 
something else. The circumstances of the Anglican 
Church render these especially easy and especially dan- 
gerous. Don’t be deceived in thinking you are for- 
warding the interests of religion or of a single soul 
by this kind of action. No doubt if you do not pursue 
this course you will be thought hard and unsympathetie, 
and often the penitent will seek another more sympa- 
thetic confessor, ‘‘who really understands her.’’ In 
that case don’t worry. 

Masters in the art of direction lay down these quali- 
ties as being indispensable to a good director—love, 
knowledge, prudence. 

The love that is indispensable is the love of souls. A 
director is devoted to his work and is intensely inter- 
ested in those whom he is directing. It is because of 
this love that he prepares himself so carefully for his 
work. He is not a theorist who desires to impose some 
uniform rule or action on his penitents, but to him each 
soul who seeks direction from him is an individual case. 
He realizes that no two souls travel in just the same 
way the path to holiness, but that each must be dealt 
with in terms of his or her own experience and situation 
in life. No doubt the intimacy of the relation will give 
rise to a certain affection between priest and penitent, 
but in this, especially in his expression of it, there must 
be nothing that is sentimental. It is an affection which 
expresses itself in care and willingness to take trouble. 
Like all true love (and this is the mark that distinguishes 
it from sentimentalism), it will not shrink from giving 
pain when necessary; for direction, if it is to accomplish 


172 The Parish Priest 


its ends, of necessity involves discipline. It means that 
faults have to be corrected, that passions have to be 
controlled. It means that the penitent must be aroused 
to the fact that the discipline of character is not at- 
tained by talk about religion, but by continuous and 
hard work. The word ‘‘discipline’’ is not a favorite 
one, even with religious people. The thought of an 
ascetic life is not one they cherish, but there can be 
no advance in holiness without discipline and the as- 
cetic life; and the director who fails to insist on this, 
as the very foundation, is merely deceiving his penitent. 
You can’t begin the life of holiness at the Unitive stage, 
you have to begin at the beginning. To make a medi- 
tation, to say a few intercessions, to join some pious 
society, even to go a little more frequently to Mass 
is not of necessity to progress in the way of perfection. 
One has to learn to take up the cross of self-discipline 
gladly from day to day, one has to learn to endure hard- 
ness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. The director 
must have the love that will point the penitent to such 
things, the courage that will not shrink from pointing 
out defects of character, failure in accomplishment, 
wrong ideals of what the life of spiritual perfection 
really is. It is only by this love and courage that 
he can hope to do his appointed work with souls. 

The second quality requisite in a director is knowl- 
edge, knowledge of two sorts—of moral and spiritual 
theology, and of human nature. 

The general run of questions which come before one 
to decide and comment on in the confessional can be 
dealt with by any one who has a fair training in the 
Christian religion. The serious questions that arise in 
the work of directing souls are quite another matter. 


The Parish Priest 173 


It is no longer a matter of pointing out the sinfulness 
of such and such acts, of showing that the penitent’s 
conduct is based on conventions rather than Christian 
principles, of suggesting means of helpfulness in over- 
coming temptations and for growth in grace. In direc- 
tion one is dealing with souls aspiring to pass beyond 
precept to the free region of the Counsels, whose ambi- 
tion is not to lead a life free from sin, but to grow up 
into the full grown man in Christ Jesus. To help such 
souls the director must have a competent knowledge of 
his subject, must understand the spiritual problems that 
are involved. The priest who desires to be a compe- 
tent director, therefore, will read and reread not only 
accredited manuals of ascetic theology, but the works 
of spiritual authors and especially he will study the 
lives of the saints, in order to learn how principle passes 
into practice. 

The lives of the great saints are object lessons in 
spiritual living. A saint is formed gradually on the 
training field of experience. His life shows in the con- 
crete how one man has met the problems of spiritual 
living and has succeeded in attaining to a high degree 
that conformity to Christ which is holiness. The story 
of his successes and of his failures throws light on the 
questions with which the director has to deal. The 
questions which arise in his mind are answered there; 
not, of course, all questions in the life of any one saint, 
and therefore there is need of broad reading in this 
field. It may be said that most of the saints whose 
lives we read lived in other lands and under other con- 
ditions than those of the present. That is true, but the 
spiritual problems they had to settle were fundamentally 
the same as those of our contemporaries. The skill of 


174 The Parish Priest 


the director is shown in his ability to understand the 
essential nature of the problems he has to deal with 
and his ability to translate the experience of-the past 
into terms of the present—to understand how the ex- 
perience of a St. Catherine or a St. Teresa can throw 
light on the case in hand. The cases are far apart 
superficially, but the same principles are involved. Only 
a very unskilled director would take a rule of life which 
belonged to some saint of another time and circum- 
stances and give it to a modern penitent; yet the rule 
contains what the penitent needs, if it be modified and 
worked over in terms of contemporary life. Success- 
fully to do this requires, on the part of the director, 
not only abstract knowledge of ascetics or knowledge 
of the concrete application of them in the lives of 
such and such saints, but practical knowledge of human 
nature, of the nature of the man or woman with whom 
he is dealing. Competent direction means the study of 
the whole circumstances of the life of the person di- 
rected, a study also of the psychology of that person. 
Advice which is good in one ease is bad in another. 
The line of spiritual action urged on one must be denied 
another. One person is rash and self-confident, ready 
to assume responsibility and to undertake whatever is 
suggested; but is also easily tired by steady effort and 
throws over the work imposed, as being impossible, be- 
fore an adequate trial has been made. Another person 
is weak-willed and depressed and needs to be constantly 
stimulated, returns again and again to the same point 
and never gets any question settled. Every case has its 
own peculiarities and therefore needs a special method 
of treatment. The spiritual physician must not be like 
the quack who has one remedy for all diseases. The 


The Parish Priest 175 


self-confident and the scrupulous are cases needing dis- 
tinct treatment. If a priest does not care to fit himself 
for the work of a director, he will do better to turn 
cases which require skilled treatment over to others. 
They will be injured by the experiments of the un- 
skilled. 

The director needs also to understand the limitations 
of his work and his own limitations therein. For this he 
needs the gift of prudence. He is not a creator but a 
guide. The creative work, the impulse toward holiness, 
the desire of conformity to the Divine Model do not 
come from him, they are the work of the Holy Spirit. 
The director, therefore, studies the penitent with a view 
to determining how the soul is being led by the Spirit, 
to what sphere of spiritual activity it is called, how 
far the creative work has gone on. Often the priest 
has to deal with souls who are farther on in the path 
of perfection than he is himself. Fortunately the ability 
of the priest to direct does not depend upon his own 
accomplishment, but upon his possession of knowledge 
and prudence. One sees what ought to be done, even 
if one have not done it; one understands what is involved 
in a spiritual state that differs from one’s own. If one 
had to have identical experiences in order to advise, 
one would be helpless before all cases except one’s own. 
But the director, because he has studied the modes of 
the work of the Holy Spirit in many cases, can bring his 
own knowledge to bear on this special case of which 
he recognizes the needs at the present moment and sees 
what is the step which should next be taken. Just 
because he lacks personal experience (and in proportion 
as he does), he needs intensive study to compensate 
for his lack. 


176 The Parish Priest 


The direction of a soul necessarily implies that that 
soul is to be under the care of the director for a 
length of time. Advice may be given to one whom one 
does not see frequently, but direction implies a suffi- 
ciently frequent and sufficiently prolonged intercourse 
to enable one to become intimately acquainted with the 
spiritual state of the penitent. Direction, therefore, im- 
plies a more or less permanent relation, deliberately en- 
tered upon. That being so, it is desirable that the 
director should. put the penitent, if need be, in the 
proper attitude to him. These are some of the qualities 
which are to be expected in the penitent and imposed 
upon him if they are observed to be lacking. : 

The penitent is not to see in the director just a friend 
who is giving kindly advice. The director is a priest, 
the representative of Jesus Christ. Through him, there- 
fore, Christ is acting. Through him the Holy Spirit is 
guiding. He is not speaking of himself, he is adminis- 
tering a trust. The power conferred upon the priest 
of binding and loosing carries with it the power to direct 
and guide souls in the way of perfection. As the director 
himself is conscious of depending in his work on the 
guidance of the Holy Spirit, as he seeks that guidance 
constantly in his prayers, as he takes with him to the 
altar the needs of those who have committed themselves 
to his guidance and presents each one before our Lord, 
so must he try to imprint a like attitude on the person 
directed. He must be made to understand the super- 
natural character of the relation, that he is bringing 
his spiritual needs before one supernaturally endowed 
with authority to minister, to speak in the name of the 
Supreme Director and under the guidance of the Holy 
Spirit. Because of this, it is of great importance that, 


The Parish Priest LEE 


so far as is possible, direction shall take place under 
conditions that will suggest this character of the director, 
that is, in the confessional. Confidential talks outside 
the confessional tend to place the relation on a purely 
human basis and bring down the priest from his judg- 
ment seat, as the representative of Christ, to the level 
of a kindly and sympathetic friend. This cheapens the 
relation and may lead to disastrous consequences. 

It is essential to proper direction that the authority 
of the priest be not lowered. He is not merely tendering 
advice, he is directing. This direction may not take the 
form of formal orders which are to be carried out under 
the penalty of sin; nevertheless, they are authoritative 
and are to be respected. The penitent must be taught 
that on his part an attitude of respect and submission 1s 
required, if any good result is to be expected from the 
relation entered upon. The Church leaves the penitent 
absolutely free to choose his director; but, the director 
having been chosen, he is to be treated as his office 
requires. Neither ought the director to be changed, un- 
less for weighty reasons—never simply because the ad- 
vice given, the course of action prescribed is unwelcome. 
It should also be impressed upon the penitent that com- 
plete confidence and frankness is essential to the relation. 
There are timid souls who hesitate to confide themselves 
completely, there are reticent souls who find it difficult 
to speak of their innermost experiences. They must be 
made to understand that nothing can be done without 
complete opening of the whole life. The director, pro- 
ceeding upon partial knowledge, is quite apt to blunder 
grievously. Unless entire confidence is reposed in the 
director, it is better not to enter into the relation at all. 

Human nature opposes strange obstacles to the ad- 


178 The Parish Priest 


vance of the soul in holiness. The priest, therefore, 
must not be surprised to find that some who come to him ~ 
to place themselves under his direction prove to be 
lacking in docility. They show a tendency to argue the 
case, to dispute the advice given. This trait is tem- 
peramental. Every priest knows the penitent who 
confesses a sin and then, when the priest begins to- 
comment on it, at once sets up a defence and over- 
flows with excuses. They are ready to blame themselves, 
but they resent being blamed by others. This type of 
soul is always on the defensive and finds it extremely 
difficult to submit frankly and simply to direction. They 
must be made to see that nothing can be done for them 
till they can get into a different mental attitude. 

The work of a director of souls is a very trying one 
and requires patience and long suffering and gentleness. 
In an ordinary parish there will not be many persons 
who require direction, in the advanced sense in which 
I have been treating it; but a competent director will 
soon come to be known and penitents who need him 
will seek him. But we must remember, in advising peo- 
ple in the choice of a director, that the fact that people 
flock to the confessional of a given priest does not prove 
that he has the requisite qualities of a skilled director. 
It may be that they are attracted to him by certain 
purely human characteristics, because they find in him 
a sympathetic friend, rather than a learned and cour- 
ageous guide to holiness. 


CHAPTER XV 
THe CHILDREN 


Unver normal conditions the children in a parish will 
in a few years become the men and women of that parish. 
Owing to the migratory habits of Americans however, 
few adults ever remain in the place where they were 
born and grew up. The children of to-day in any parish 
will twenty years hence have scattered to almost every 
state in the Union. Moreover, the children of the fami- 
lies which constitute the main support of the parish 
ean hardly be counted as the children of the parish, 
as their religious training, when they are so fortunate 
as to have any, is rarely entrusted to the clergy of the 
parish. In most of our city parishes the children whom 
one sees in the Sunday School, the children’s guilds 
and clubs, or in the choir, come from homes entirely out- 
side of the parish. Their parents belong to the un- 
churched multitudes who do not profess any creeds, or 
have lapsed from the practice of religion. Under such 
anomalous conditions it is by no means a simple mat- 
ter to teach children to believe in and practice the 
Catholic religion. Those whom we ¢an reach will have 
little encouragement or support from their families, 
while those who come from supposedly loyal Church 
families are studiously kept out of our reach, from the 
parental fear either that they may contract some conta- 
gious disease or that they may imbibe too much religion. 
Then too, many of our Church families have no children 
at all. 

Assuming then that some children may be entrusted to 
our spiritual care, how shall we train them to become 
loyal, devout adherents of the Church? First of all we 


180 The Parish Priest 


must baptize them, whether they are brought to us as 
infants, or later on come of their own volition. They 
must be given every opportunity to grow in grace and 
in the knowledge and love of God by being washed in 
the regenerating waters of baptism and thus made 
partakers of the divine nature. It is not advisable to 
baptize promiscuously every infant on whom we can lay 
our hands, but only those of whom we may have rea- 
sonable assurance that they will be brought up to lead a 
godly and a Christian life. This assurance we look 
for from their parents and sponsors. We should exer- 
cise scrupulous care in admitting as sponsors only those 
who will use their influence to the end that the children 
may be brought up in the Church and receive a Christian 
education. It is most important that the priest or some 
parish worker deputed by him should enroll the newly 
baptized infant in a font roll, so that during the next 
four years the child may not be lost sight of. Then, as 
soon as the child is old enough, he should be brought into 
the kindergarten or primary department of the Church 
school. 

From the age of four to the age of nine or ten chil- 
dren should be taught by competent teachers in the 
primary department. If their parents bring them they 
ought to find a place in an adult Bible class while the 
children are being instructed in their classes. At this 
age the children should be trained in the elementary 
practices of religion, such as saving their prayers, kneel- 
ing, making the sign of the cross, and in general observ- 
ing good manners in church; and they should at the 
same time be taught the simplest truths of the Christian 
religion. These are the most impressionable years in 
the whole period of physical growth, and the habits 





The Parish Priest 181 


formed and the ideas assimilated during those years will 
have a powerful effect on children’s subsequent develop- 
ment. Here if anywhere in the Church school course 
it is essential that the children should be in the hands 
of expert and well trained teachers. 

The question of lesson books is one that will have to 
be settled by the rector of the parish. Indeed, there 
is no need of going into it here, as before this book is 
published it is quite possible that other new lesson books 
will be brought out which will be preferable to those 
now in use. The Christian Nurture Series, which has 
been planned and executed by the Department of Re- 
ligious Education of the National Council of the Church 
ought to be the best series of books for use in our Church 
schools. It is sometimes urged against this series that 
it is too colorless, and does not meet the needs of any 
school of Churchmanship. This objection does not seem 
valid, as a teacher may build upon the foundation here 
supplied the complete superstructure of the Catholic re- 
ligion. The English Church provides many excellent 
lesson books which should be carefully looked over before 
a choice is made. 

The clergy should come into personal relations with 
the children at the ages of nine or ten, and from then 
on to thirteen or fourteen should give them instruction 
whenever possible in Confirmation classes or the Chil- 
dren’s Catechism or in addresses at the Children’s 
Eucharist. During these years the children should be- 
come familiar with the Old Testament, the life of our 
Lord, the history of the Church and the lives of the 
Saints, and they should master the Church Catechism. 
These subjects may all be taken up in classes. When it 
comes to their being trained in the practice of re- 


182 The Parish Priest 


ligion it is far better that this should be done under the 
personal influence and instruction of the priest. Chil- 
dren learn to practice the Catholic religion not by being 
taught abstract lessons in the Church school, but by 
practicing it. The priest must teach them how to pray 
and what prayers to use. He must train them in Chris- . 
tian worship by means of a weekly Children’s Eucharist. 
That is the only way they will ever come to understand 
and appreciate the Mass. The priest must talk with 
them individually about sin, teach them how to make 
a self-examination and lead them gently but firmly to 
confession. Then through hearing their confessions once 
a month he will be able to guide and direct their spiritual 
and moral development. The formation of their prayer 
life on right lines, their communions, their reading, their 
response to vocations, and the intimate personal counsel 
which he gives to the children in the confessional, are 
more valuable than all the other instruction they re- 
ceive in classes and lectures and sermons taken to- 
gether. | 

The Children’s Mass is especially valuable in training 
children in habits of worship. A priest who knows 
how to teach can explain to them Sunday by Sunday 
all the different parts of the service, the meaning of 
the ceremonial, the symbolism of lights and incense, the 
liturgical colors, the vestments, and so on. But best 
of all he can train them to love our Lord and can show 
them what it means to offer themselves to God in union 
with the Sacrifice of our Lord on the cross and on the 
altar. This can be done better if there are two priests, 
as one can explain the prayers and the actions of the 
celebrant while the other is officiating at the altar. It 
is absurd to think that we can ever teach children to use 


The Parish Priest 183 


and value the Mass if their only experience of it is 
a late celebration in the church on the first Sunday in 
the month, when many of the parishioners turn their 
backs upon our Lord and only a few remain to take 
part in this highest act of worship. 

If a priest is thus training his children individually 
from the ages of nine to twelve in the practice of the 
Catholic religion, Confirmation will be an incident 
in their spiritual lives for which little special prepara- 
tion is required. They will have made their confessions 
and communions many times before they are presented to 
the Bishop for Confirmation. They will have learned to 
look upon Confirmation as simply one more sacrament, 
which is administered only once for the purpose of com- 
pleting their equipment as soldiers of Christ. They will 
not look upon Confirmation in the way that many chil- 
dren do now, as their graduation from religion. Alas, 
how many hundreds of children have been confirmed and 
have never even made their communions afterward! 
They have left the Church for ever, thinking they have 
learned all that they need to know about religion; and 
their Confirmation certificate is the diploma which oc- 
cupies in their minds much the same place as their di- 
plomas of graduation from the grammar school, which 
they received about the same time. 

It is difficult enough to hold the children in the years 
of adolescence. Why not establish them thoroughly in 
the practice of their religion during the innocent and 
susceptible years from nine to twelve or thirteen? If 
they come to their confessions and communions once a 
month during those years and then fall away from the 
Church they will at least know how to come back into 
a state of grace. They will never forget those years 


184 The Parish Priest 


when they were so happy in their loving companionship 
with Jesus, and they will often experience a strong 
yearning to return. If, on the other hand, they are con- 
firmed during the tumultuous, upsetting period of 
adolescence, religion will never have a chance to become 
an established power in their lives. Their own novel 
experiences and the allurements of a newly dis- 
covered world will absorb their whole attention and 
religion will seem cold and unreal. 

If children have been confirmed about the age of ten, 
or younger—as soon as they begin to know the differ- 
ence between right and wrong and to experience the 
power of temptation—they will nevertheless need watch- 
ful care and attention in their early teens. It is not 
wise to attempt to hold them any longer in the Sunday 
school. They might well be given diplomas of gradua- 
tion from the Church school at the same time that 
they complete their grammar school course. After that 
they should be gathered together in clubs or guilds in 
which they may do some useful work for the Church. 
Boys may be taught to serve the priest at the altar, and 
if the girls are not sufficiently advanced to be trained 
in taking care of the altar and vestments there is plenty 
of other work that they can do. Occasionally they may 
be enlisted in some enterprise to raise money for the 
Church. But they should be kept interested at all costs. 
If they slip away during these years of adolescent energy 
they may become lost to the Church for many years to 
come. 

American children of fourteen years and upwards can- 
not be dragooned into doing what they do not want to 
do. It is futile to rely upon force to get them 
to do what in their hearts they dislike. We must rather 


The Parish Priest 185 


aim to teach them to love their religion so that they 
will gladly do what the Church expects them to do. It 
is a mistake ever to eject an obstreperous youth 
from a church service or class of instruction. 
Boys from fourteen to sixteen often behave in a pe- 
culiarly irritating way, as if they were possessed by a 
demon. It will do no good to shout at them. What 
they need is a friendly personal chat with the priest in 
his study, and the opportunity to tell why they think 
they have been badly treated. A little patience and 
kindly interest will win them when stern commands 
or violent methods would be futile. Boys and girls 
in their teens love to manage their own affairs. The 
democratic spirit has already gained possession of them. 
They resent having Church workers put over them to do 
them good or to supervise their games. They will wel- 
come suggestions and advice from the clergy or 
social worker; and they will codperate eagerly when 
asked to help others or to do something for the Church. 

The children of the rich are one of the most perplexing 
problems of the parish priest. It is next to impossible 
to enlist them for religious instruction. Their parents 
will not send them to the Sunday school nor permit 
them to mix in any way with the poorer children of 
the parish. They say they are afraid that they will 
catch measles or searlet fever, and doubtless that fear 
does deter them to some extent. A more serious rea- 
son, rarely expressed, is that their parents do not want 
them to prejudice their future social success by ming- 
ling with those whose parents are not in the social 
register. But this is not the whole reason. If the priest 
attempts to provide a special class for the children of the 
socially irreproachable on a week day afternoon he will 


186 The Parish Priest 


discover the real reason why they are not permitted to 
fall into his hands. It is because the world has al- 
ready captured them, and that is what their parents 
want. Their whole time after school hours is taken 
up with music lessons, parties, skating clubs and dancing 
school. They are being prepared primarily for social - 
popularity and worldly success. To this end it is far 
more important that they should learn to dance and 
skate and ride and play tennis and golf than that they 
should learn to practice the Catholic religion. Even 
going to heaven is a questionable good, as they would 
probably not find many of their social set there. Then, 
too, there is danger that they might become too absorbed 
in religion. A boy might take it into his foolish head 
to become a celibate priest, or a weak-minded girl might 
be induced by some priest or sister to enter a convent. 
Or they might become infected with certain moral inhi- 
bitions which would make them socially unpopular. 

It may be thought that the solution of the problem 
is the Church boarding school. There the children 
of the rich may be trained in the faith and practices 
of the Catholic religion. Here again the world—or the 
devil—steps in and proves how suicidal socially it would 
be for these children to go to a Church school. They 
must at all costs—and the costs are pretty high—be sent 
to the fashionable schools which are patronized by most 
of their social set. This is particularly the case with 
girls. The boys may still be sent to Church schools with- 
out prejudice to their social careers—although it is sur- 
prising how many Church parents still send their sons 
to schools where they will be entirely insulated from 
all Church influences. 


CHAPTER XVI 
Tue Care oF THE SICK 


In every parish of any considerable size there are al- 
ways some sick people—some of them only temporarily 
ill, a few probably approaching death, and many bed- 
ridden with chronic ailments which appear to be incur- 
able. It should be one of the primary duties of the 
parish priest to have always in his pocket notebook 
the names and addresses of these sick persons, in order 
that he may intercede for them and call on them faith- 
fully. He should frequently remind his congregation 
to let him know of any of their friends or relatives who 
are sick. I have been told of a priest in a suburban 
parish who never calls on his people unless they are 
ill, but when they are ill he calls on them every day. 
He is held in affectionate esteem by all his parishioners, 
for though not all of them have been ill, they are con- 
vinced that their priest is a zealous pastor with a 
generous and sympathetic heart. This plan might pos- 
sibly be difficult of fulfilment in a parish of wide extent, 
as are most city parishes. But it represents an ideal 
which we may all approximate. 

The first use to be made of this list of the sick which 
the priest should have constantly with him in convenient 
form is to pray for them daily. We must get into the 
way of looking at the sick as God looks at them, and 
try to learn what is the divine purpose in permitting 
these ailments to fall upon them. Few of us feel 
that we can dogmatize offhand as to the purposes 
and designs of Almighty God. There are some, it is 
true, who teach that sickness is always contrary to the 
divine will and that God wants everyone to be enjoying 
robust health. Most of us are not so cock-sure as 


188 The Parish Priest 


this. We fail to find any evidence for such a belief 
in God’s Holy Word. The laws of nature cannot be so 
wholly out of harmony with the will of God; and it is 
certainly a law of nature that if we violate the prin- 
ciples of sound hygiene we shall suffer the consequences. 
Many forms of headache, dyspepsia, kidney trouble, 
diabetes, and countless other diseases are often the di- 
rect result of gluttony. Shall we say that it is contrary 
to the will of God that the sin of gluttony should be 
visited with such punishments? At any rate, there is 
nothing like daily prayer for the sick to teach us sane 
and spiritual views of the nature of sickness and of 
the sufferings that call out our sympathy. More- 
over, if it be God’s will that the sick person shall be 
brought back to health it may be that He will bring 
about that happy consummation through our prayers. 

By praying daily for the sick the priest must bear them 
constantly in his mind and heart, and that will give him 
a compelling impulse to call upon them. His daily 
prayer for them ought also to enable him to keep in 
the right order the purposes he may serve in visiting 
them. I cannot feel that the primary purpose in visiting 
the sick should be to bring about their recovery. The 
primary purpose should be to conform their wills to 
the will of God. In other words, we must labor for 
the conversion of their souls. Sickness provides a God- 
given opportunity to turn their thoughts to spiritual 
concerns and to win their hearts away from the life of 
sin. Most people in their ordinary daily life are wholly 
given over to selfish aims and immersed in a worldly at- 
mosphere. Some of them have frankly sold themselves to 
the service of Satan. Now for a time because of their 
illness they are forcibly detached from the world and 
its mad rush for pleasure. They are making a retreat of 


The Parish Priest 189 


a sort. Why not convert it into a genuine spiritual 
retreat in which they may ponder the deeper pur- 
poses of life and realize how far they have drifted from 
the love and service of their Creator, Redeemer and 
Sanctifier ? 

If a priest were the possessor of the miraculous oift 
of healing through the laying on of hands and were 
able to restore immediately to health every sick person 
whom he touched, it is doubtful if his ministry could be 
called a spiritual ministry at all. He would be working 
entirely on the materialistic plane. He would be send- 
ing back instantaneously to a life of selfishness and 
worldliness those whom God might otherwise have gently 
led into the ways of penitence and peace. I may note 
in passing that this is the chief defect of all the health 
cults which abound in America to-day. Whatever they 
may teach about the supremacy of spirit and the illusori- 
ness of matter they do concentrate the attention upon the 
body. They make bodily health the supreme end of 
man. They encourage selfishness, luxury and living for 
the good things of this world, to the forgetfulness of God 
and our eternal destiny to be citizens in a kingdom 
not of this world. 

If the conversion of the sick man from sin to God 
should be the primary purpose of the priest in visiting 
him, the secondary purpose may well be to cheer him 
up. There is nothing like a wholesome, hearty laugh to 
transform the atmosphere of a sick room and inspire 
the patient with confidence and a desire to get well. 
Too many priests slink into a sick room with a long, 
solemn face, a sepulchral voice, and the manner of an 
undertaker. No one who is ill wants a visit from a sad- 
looking priest any more than he does from a gloomy, 
depressing and despairing physician. A good laugh is 


190 The Parish Priest 


invigorating. An amusing story may do more than the 
doctor’s pills. | An inspiring account of a heroie action 
may fire the patient’s imagination, set the will in motion 
and thereby release unknown energies in the un- 
conscious self. Fortunately the priest does not know 
so much about the patient’s condition as the doctor 
does, and therefore he is more care free and the better 
able to induce a state of happiness and hopefulness. 

Thirdly in order of importance, let the priest do what 
he can to bring about healing through spiritual means 
such as the laying on of hands, hearing the invalid’s 
confession and bestowing absolution, communicating him 
with the Blessed Sacrament and perhaps anointing him 
with holy oil. It may not be out of place to say a few 
words about each of these means of spiritual healing. 

1. Prayer. First of all, the priest must pray that the 
patient may be given grace to submit to God’s will. 
Then he must ask for the increase of the virtues of 
faith, hope, charity, and contrition. If possible, it is 
well to have the person say with him the Acts of Faith, 
Hope, Love, and Contrition. He should lay great stress 
in his prayer on the petition for forgiveness. He should 
also pray for resignation, and last of all for recovery 
or a holy death, whichever may be God’s will. 

2. The Laying on of Hands. It was our Lord’s prac- 
tice to lay hands on the sick, that they might recover. 
While we have no definite provision of the Church which 
would include the laying on of hands among the sacra- 
ments, and while there is no teaching that the power 
to heal through the laying on of hands has always 
resided in the Apostolic ministry, yet it is reasonable 
to assume that this practice is somewhat of the nature 
of a sacramental, and that just as a priest conveys some 


The Parish Priest 191 


spiritual effect through his blessings, so he may convey 
the divine healing power through the laying on of hands. 
It is well, however, that he should prepare the sick person 
by trying to elicit an act of faith. We know how our 
Lord always sought to arouse faith in the sick before 
He laid His hands on them. He taught that it was their 
faith that really brought about the healing. ‘‘Accord- 
ing to thy faith be it unto thee.’’ ‘If thou canst believe! 
All things that are possible to him that believeth.’ In 
the Priest’s English Ritual published by the 8. §. P. Pe 
there is a form of prayer which the priest uses before 
laying on his hands after which he is directed to lay his 
hands upon the head of the sick person, saying: 


Thou shalt lay hands on the sick and they shall 
recover. 


May Jesus, the Son of Mary, the Lord and Re- 
deemer of the world, through the merits and inter- 
cession of His Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and 
of all His Saints, show thee favor and mercy. Amen. 

Then he blesses the sick person and sprinkles him with 
holy water. 

3. Confession and Absolution. The priest must do 
all in his power to persuade the sick person to make a 
confession of his sins in order that he may receive abso- 
lution. Ordinarily this would not be difficult, but if the 
person has been all his life under the sway of Protestant 
prejudice it may be better to get him to unburden his 
conscience without using the regular forms of con- 
fession and without even calling it by that name. There 
are many kinds of illness, especially those that arise out 
of troubled mental states, which can be almost com- 
pletely dispelled by a thorough confession. Every priest 
who has had much experience in dealing with the sick 


192 The Parish Priest 


can recall many such cases. When we have at our 
disposal a means of such enormous curative value it 
would be most unjust to our people not to use it. Nowa- 
days when so many are willing to admit the benefits that 
may come from psychoanalysis in eradicating disturbing 
complexes from the unconscious mind, it ought not to 
be difficult to persuade people to make a clean breast 
of disturbing memories in the conscious mind. It helps 
them, as Professor William James strikingly described 
it, ‘to exteriorize their rottenness.’’ It is far better to 
drag the moral rottenness out of one than to allow it 
to remain within as a festering sore. 

4. Communion. In cases of long continued illness we 
should not fail to communicate the sick person with 
the Reserved Sacrament as soon as possible. This should 
be continued at least once a week as long as the illness 
lasts. It is absolutely out of the question for a busy 
priest to communicate many sick people with any degree 
of frequency unless he has the Reserved Sacrament at 
his disposal. Sufficient proof of this assertion is to be 
found in the records of any diocesan journal, Every 
large parish which has the Reserved Sacrament reports a 
large number of private communions. It is simply im- 
possible for a priest to celebrate the communion half a 
dozen times in a morning, but it is not too great a 
burden to carry the Reserved Sacrament to half a 
dozen sick people on the same day. And it is surprising 
how many sick people are healed merely by a devout 
and well prepared reception of the Blessed Sacrament. 

0. Holy Unction. This should be used in the 
most serious illnesses, not necessarily only when people 
are dying, but whenever there is grave danger of death. 
It should never be used more than once in the same 


The Parish Priest 193 


illness. It is not to be given to children under years of 
discretion or to unbaptized persons. It is better that 
it should be prepared for by sacramental confession. The 
form of anointing which can be found in any priest’s 
Prayer Book provides that the patient be anointed on 
the seats of the senses, the eyes, the nostrils, the lips, the 
ears, the hands and the feet. The form of anointing 
on the forehead alone should be used only in cases of 
emergency when there is not time to anoint on the seats 
of the senses. Here again the most marvelous results 
may take place. Many a Catholic priest can tell of 
countless instances of people who have been brought back 
from the verge of death after the physicians had given 
them up, when it apparently was entirely the result of 
receiving the Sacrament of Extreme Unction. 

I hope that nothing I have said will give the im- 
pression that I am advocating that sick people should 
dispense with physicians and material remedies. In 
fact, it is a misnomer to speak of Unction and the lay- 
ing on of hands as spiritual healing. Healing that comes 
as the result of a surgical operation or medical treatment 
may be quite as truly spiritual healing. God can work 
through physicians, surgeons and nurses quite as readily 
as He can work through priests. The reasonable thing 
would seem to be to use all possible means of healing. 
Physicians and medicines have to do mainly with the 
body. The clergy through their prayers and sacra- 
mental ministrations have to do primarily with the 
spiritual side of man’s nature. But the healing of the 
body may have its effect upon the soul, and the healing 
of the soul may have its effect upon the body. 
The wise thing is to do everything we can both for the 
healing of body and the healing of soul. 


CHAPTER XVII 
THE Mentatuy Sick 


One of the most difficult classes that the priest has 
to reckon with in his parish work is the class which 
comprises those who are suffering from unfortunate 
mental trends of one kind or another. We call them 
psychopathic, because in a very real sense their souls 
are sick. A sharp distinction should be drawn between 
the more serious psychotic reactions which are legally 
designated as insanity and the less grave mental dis- 
orders, including especially psychopathic personalities. 
It would be a grave inaccuracy to classify all psychopa- 
thic individuals as feeble-minded or mentally deficient, 
as many of them possess a very high grade of intelli- 
gence. A priest may be totally unable to understand 
some of them, much less to be of service to them, just 
because they have a quicker mentality than he has. 
Nevertheless, it is true of most people of this group 
that there is some twist or distortion or abnormality 
in their mental or nervous condition; and the sooner the 
parish priest learns to face this fact, the better it will be 
for him and for the whole parish. 

Not a few of these people are commonly regarded 
by their fellow parishioners as mystics, or at least as 
notably devout and spiritually minded. It is quite pos- 
sible that all genuine mysties in a parish at a given 
time may belong to that section of parishioners who are 
not enjoying robust mental health: but it does not fol- 
low that all the mentally sick are mystics or even saints. 
Kvery priest can recall countless instance of people 
who speak of unusual inner experiences, who say they 
have seen the light, who even boast of visions; but 
the very fact that they talk so glibly about such mat- 


The Parish Priest 195 


ters to everybody only betrays the unfortunate mental 
state from which they are suffering. 

While some of these afflicted souls are abnormally 
quick witted, others are only dull and stupid. It would 
be hard to say which of these two divisions is more 
responsible for many of the disturbances and factional 
conflicts which mar the serenity of parish life. When 
we trace to its source a foolish or ignorant remark or 
an untrue story, we often find that it emanates from 
one who is mentally not entirely responsible and has 
imagined a situation that does not actually exist. Such 
people frequently make frenzied statements which are 
upsetting to their hearers, who do not realize that they 
should not be taken too seriously. Some of these people 
are inclined to impute motives wrongfully and to in- 
terpret as a slight what was not intended as such. Others 
let their tongues wag too freely. Still others make al- 
most no trouble at all, but because of their timidity and 
retiring disposition they are more inclined to be over 
sensitive and to depreciate themselves unduly. All of 
these we must take into our calculations, for like the 
poor, they are always with us. We shall never be in 
charge of a parish made up entirely of normal people. 
We cannot very well etablish psychological tests as 
part of the preparation for baptism and confirmation, 
nor is it desirable that we should. ‘‘The whole need 
not a physician, but they that are sick.”’ 

Would that our bishops and seminaries might con- 
sider the feasibility of mental tests for candidates for 
the priesthood! This is a real necessity in America to- 
day. In many of our parishes the utmost spiritual 
havoc has been wrought by an unbalanced or hysterical 
priest. If when he entered the seminary he had been 
taken in hand by an expert psychoanalyst he might 


196 The Parish Priest 


have been shown the course that would lead to more 
thorough self-knowledge and self-control. If that had 
been out of the question, he could at least have been 
warned of his unsuitableness for the ministry. As for 
the clergy who may read these pages, if any of them 
have realized that all is not well with them nervously 
or mentally, I should like to urge them as a brother 
priest to consult the wisest neurologist or mental special- 
ist that they can find, asking him to do what he ean to 
straighten them out; and failing that, to advise them 
frankly whether or not they should retire from active 
parish work. It is better that they should face them- 
selves honestly in this way before they attempt to 
advise penitents or to minister in any way to the 
mentally sick. 

The first thing that is necessary if the priest is to 
deal wisely with unusual types of behaviour in his 
parishioners, is to admit his own ignorance and incom- 
petence. The only priests who are adequately pre- 
pared to enter seriously into psychopathology are those 
(if any such exist) who before or after their seminary 
course have devoted three or four years to the study of 
abnormal psychology in a medical school or under some 
eminent specialist here or abroad. <A priest should at 
least read widely in the new psychology, and he will 
then realize how little fitted he is to practice any sort 
of psychotherapy. Incidentally, he may learn many 
valuable truths which will be of the utmost assistance 
to him in the hearing of confessions and the work of 
spiritual direction. He will also discover that psycho- 
logists differ radically among themselves in the 
description, classification and explanation of mental 
states and types of conduct that deviate from the nor- 
mal, and that what is taught dogmatically by the leading 


The Parish Priest 197 


authorities in psychology may be denied tomorrow by 
their successors. 

In view of the rapidly changing opinions of psycho- 
logists one hesitates to recommend any books on this 
subject for the clergy to read. Every priest who reads 
at all can easily keep up with the latest psychological 
conclusions which bear on his particular tasks. There 
is no more interesting or necessary study than 
psychology for one whose life work is the cure of souls. 
As a convenient handbook to which the priest may con- 
stantly refer in his effort to understand, if not to 
diagnose difficult psychical cases which come within his 
ken, I would recommend Outlines of Psychiatry, by 
Dr. William Allen White. (°) Any good authority on 
psychology will suggest the best recent treatments of 
the difficult sorts of cases which the priest will meet in 
his pastoral work. Therefore I will not attempt to 
suggest any other books here. 

What course, then, ought the priest to follow in his 
relations with the mentally sick or abnormal among 
his parishioners? In general, he should leave them 
alone. In quietness and confidence is his strength. He 
will of course minister to their moral and spiritual 
needs whenever they come to him for advice or ask 
for sacramental ministrations. But it is not his function 
to attempt to heal them. He should urge them to con- 
sult some reliable psychiatrist conveniently near at hand. 
If they are too poor for that he should send them to 
the most accessible mental clinic. In New York state 
the authorities have experienced no difficulty in securing 
the attendance of mild mental sufferers at their clinics. 
In the year 1924 over one third of sixteen thousand 


(*) Published by the Journal of Mental and Nervous Diseases; New York 
City; Price, $4.00. 


198 The Parish Priest 


visitors to the mental clinics maintained by the state 
hospitals had never had any previous contact with an in- 
stitution. The priest, moreover, should codperate with 
the psychiatrist or the clinic in their work of observa- 
tion and diagnosis of the people he sends to them. Psy- 
chiatrists should make searching mental examinations 
of their patients and in these cases the priest can often 
be of some help. 

One further point by way of caution. The priest 
should make sure by previous conference with the proper 
medical authorities that the psychiatrist or clinic to be 
recommended by him are trustworthy and in good stand- 
ing with the medical profession. Unspeakable spiritual 
damage may result both for the exploited individuals and 
for the parish, when the priest sends his parishioners 
to an unscrupulous and incompetent psychiatrist or a 
clinic that operates under his malign influence. 

There are excellent mental clinics now open to people 
who cannot afford high priced doctors. These clinics are 
to be found in every section of the country except in 
very isolated places. People are much more willing to 
go to them than we think. The trouble is that so few 
of the clergy know about these clinics. Every priest 
ought to take a day off now and then and establish a 
friendly relationship with some good clinic, as well as 
with a well qualified psychiatrist in his neighborhood. 
There is a certain firm attitude of mind that can be taken 
by a priest which will send people who are in need 
of proper mental care to a physician. If ordinary prac- 
tioners, social workers, and others can induce people to 
intrust themselves to psychopathic experts, the clergy 
can do so if only they will try to learn how. 

I do not, of course, mean to say that a priest should 
not attempt to be of any assistance to the neurotic and 


The Parish Priest 199 


the mentally diseased, or that he should feel that they 
are entirely off his hands as soon as he has turned them 
over to a psychiatrist or a mental clinic. He must carry 
them in his heart and in his prayers and always treat 
them with courtesy and sympathy. But let him beware 
of mushy sentimentality! Furthermore, he should give 
constant moral support to the doctor, by doing all in his 
power to make these patients follow the regimen which | 
the doctor prescribes. 

In dealing with children who are abnormal or sub- 
normal, the priest should make every effort to discover 
what is wrong in their environment. He will do well 
to make a careful examination of their parents and their 
mode of life. He may be able to correct certain wrong 
conditions in the home which if allowed to prevail would 
ultimately produce a serious mental warp in the children. 
Then too he can prevent much nervous ill health in the 
coming years of their lives if they are permitted to resort 
regularly to him for confession. They are many things 
that children will not tell their parents which they will 
confess to a kindly and sympathetic priest. This may 
save the children much mental suffering and many a 
repressed complex in the future. 

With adults also sacramental confession at the proper 
psychological moment will often benefit the mental 
health because of the complete unburdening of the soul 
which confession makes possible. There are of course 
many obvious points of similarity between psycho- 
analysis and confession. In spite of a recent tendency 
among psychologists to minimize this analogy on the 
ground that in psychoanalysis we are concerned with the 
unconscious mind, whereas in confession we are con- 
cerned with the conscious, we may still maintain that the 


200 The Parish Priest 


confessional is of the utmost value, even on purely 
psychological grounds. It is now known that in psycho- 
analytic treatment a neurosis can often be resolved with- 
out the repressed material actually coming into the 
consciousness. This can often be done by a skilful con- 
fessor quite as well as by a psychoanalyst. A discerning 
priest, through his contact with a mental sufferer in the 
confessional, may do much in the way of reéducation, 
readjustment and the reconciliation of the patient with - 
reality. 

The psychoanalytic method has been termed the ‘‘talk- 
ing cure.’’ To the kind of talk that heals the mentally 
sick, the priest ought to be as good a listener as anyone. 
He has the immense advantage of listening to the talk 
in the sacred atmosphere of the church, perhaps before 
the Blessed Sacrament. He will do well to intersperse 
this talking cure with various forms of suggestion com- 
bined with the prayer of faith. It is important that the 
patient should be taught to believe that the cure really 
comes from within himself by faith in the power of God. 
Otherwise he may become too dependent on the priest, 
and will never learn to stand on his own feet. A priest’s 
backbone may easily give way if too many people are 
leaning on him. 

Those unfortunate souls who are hopelessly incurable 
may be taught to derive much help and comfort from 
God by the frequent use of the sacraments of penance 
and Holy Communion. If after repeated prayer their 
thorn in the flesh is not removed, they can still be made 
to see that God’s grace is sufficient to enable them to 
bear their cross with patience. It may be with them, 
as with St. Paul, that God’s strength will be made perfect 
in weakness. 


CHAPTER XVIII 
ParisH ADMINISTRATION 


Unpovustepiy the parish should be organized, and 
many books and pamphlets have been written recently 
to guide the parish priest toward an efficient organiza- 
tion. But before we take up the methods and details 
of organization, it is better that we should first clear 
our minds by trying to answer the question, to what 
end should the parish be organized? 

In other words, what is the purpose for which the 
Catholic Church exists? We believe that the Church was 
founded by our Lord, not only because of His words, 
‘On this rock I will build my Church,’’ but because 
of what He actually did. We learn from the Apostolic 
writings that the Church is the Body of Christ. He is 
the Head and we are the members of that Body. The 
Church is made up of Jesus Christ and all those who 
are sacramentally united with Him in baptism. The 
Church therefore should be regarded as the extension 
of the Incarnation. In and through the Church our 
Lord is carrying on everywhere in the world to-day the 
redemptive work in which He was engaged during His 
earthly ministry. 

There are three main divisions of the Church’s work. 
First, it conveys the divine life to men through the grace 
of the sacraments and sustains them in this mystical 
relationship with God through a life of prayer. This is 
the mystical element of religion. Secondly, the Church 
teaches to the world the revealed truth of God. This 
truth is contained in the Bible as interpreted by the 
Church, and is summed up in the Catholic Creeds. The 
Church teaches all that men need to know and to do 


202 The Parish Priest 


in order to be saved. This teaching does not put shackles 
on the intellect; it rather sets the intellect free by sup- 
plying it with a basis of assured truth upon which to 
work. This is the intellectual element of religion. 
Thirdly, the Church is concerned with the establishment 
of the Kingdom of God in this world. This means the 
rule of God in men’s hearts and the development of a 
society made up of consecrated men and women whose 
individual and corporate activities are motivated in ac- 
cordance with the divine will. This is the social ele- 
ment of religion. Any conception of the Christian 
religion which leaves out any one of these three elements 
is a deficient conception. 

From the point of view of this three-fold purpose for 
which the Church exists in the world it is easy to see 
that there are many mistaken conceptions of the Church 
and its function which have become more or less in- 
trenched in the modern world. I have space to mention 
only a few of them and I do so simply to warn the 
parish priest of various traps that are lying in wait for 
him in this whole matter of organization. It is very 
easy for a zealous and efficient young priest to have a 
wrong end in view, and then to expend a tremendous 
amount of energy in organizing his parish on utterly 
mistaken lines. We may be perfectly certain then, that 
whatever the Church is, it is not a money raising con- 
cern whose aim is to work up a tremendous budget, and 
to extract as much money as possible from its members 
for all sorts of causes, good, bad, and indifferent. Neither 
is the Church a philanthropic organization for the im- 
provement of the condition of the poor or for holding 
dental clinics or instituting a system of public play- 
grounds or any similar works which are being so 


The Parish Priest 203 


admirably taken care of by all sorts of scientific charit- 
able organizations in our cities as well as in the country. 
Again, the Church is not an amusement corporation 
which exists for the purpose of supplying free entertain- 
ment in the way of dances, plays, gymnasium, swimming 
pool, and so forth, for an impecunious multitude of 
hangers on. Neither is the Church a concert hall whose 
chief aim is to supply elaborate musical entertainments 
on Sundays for the aesthetically inclined, The Church is 
not an employment bureau whose primary business it 
is to find jobs for all who worship at its altars. The 
Church does not exist for the purpose of giving the 
idle rich who are charitably inclined opportunities to 
do good to the poor and thereby bolster up their flagging 
spiritual zeal. Finally, the Church is not a society estab- 
lished for the purpose of Spreading in the heathen 
world the so-called benefits of European and American 
civilization, such as medical care, hospitals, baths, 
school and colleges, and democratic institutions, 

An insidious peril which confronts every young priest 
is that he may become obsessed with the modern 
idea of efficiency and think that his first duty is to 
organize his parish in accordance with current ideals 
of big business, without having the slightest notion of the 
ultimate end for which he is organizing. Various ad- 
mirable leaflets are issued under the auspices of our 
National Council which explain the steps one must take 
in organizing a parish. The danger is that we may 
try to put these suggestions into effect without arriving 
first at a clear idea of what is the purpose of our mins- 
try, and why theChurch exists at all. Of course, 
organization is necessary for any effective parochial life. 
The function of organization somewhat resembles the 


204 The Parish Priest 


function of the skeleton in the human body. Without it 
the body would be but a jellylike mass. The skeleton 
must be there, but we are not always exhibiting it, nor are 
we greatly concerned about it. We feel that the less 
said about it the better. So it is with organization; it is 
a sort of necessary evil, but we should never allow it 
to take possession of our minds, or make us fall into the 
blunder of regarding organization as the end rather than 
the means. | 

The first thing that the parish priest needs to organize 
is himself. He ought to master the rudimentary details 
of a businesslike system. Above all, he should learn how 
to keep a desk so that there shall be on top of it only 
what is absolutely necessary and not a hopeless litter of 
books and papers and pictures and unopened packages, 
which advertizes to everybody that his mind and his life 
are wholly disorganized. There should be a place for 
unfinished work on one side of the desk, a free space in 
the middle where he may work, and another space on 
the other side for completed tasks. Each drawer in the 
desk should be kept exclusively for certain things, so that 
the priest may always find what he wants without waste 
of time. All these matters, and similar matters that 
have to do with the organization of the priest’s life | 
and the formation of businesslike habits have been briefly 
and persuasively set forth in a little book by the 
Reverend Marshall M. Day, called Business Methods for 
the Clergy. 

Then it is necessary to organize the parish according 
to its size and special circumstances and needs. There 
should be a budget adopted at the beginning of every 
year and it should be clearly ascertained where the 
money is coming from to meet this budget. It should 


The Parish Priest 205 


not be left to chance, but a definite system must be em- 
ployed which is best adapted to the social condition of the 
parish to enable people to give according to their means 
toward meeting this budget. Whether a layman or the 
priest himself is to be the parish treasurer depends upon 
local conditions. Whether the duplex envelopes are the 
best means of collecting the funds necessary for the 
parochial and outside obligations of a particular parish 
must be definitely considered and decided. A priest must 
have a working list of all the people of his parish in a 
card catalogue. The parish register is merely a formal 
book to be kept in obedience to the Canons of the Church. 
It is of no value as a list of the actual members of the 
parish. If there is not a well kept card catalogue of 
the parishioners it is an indication that someone is care- 
less and lacking in zeal for souls. Furthermore, a clergy- 
man should delegate every piece of work that does not 
require the presence and ministrations of a priest to 
lay workers and assistants. For a busy man who has 
many irons in the fire and who must keep his mind and 
spirit concentrated on certain difficult tasks, it is a good 
rule never to do himself what he can get someone else 
to do. 

Under the head of parish organization we must con- 
sider Church guilds and societies. These ought to be 
as few as possible rather than as many as possible, and 
they ought not to overlap. They may be grouped roughly 
into five types: devotional, missionary, educational, so- 
cial service, and for parish maintenance. People should 
be encouraged to devote themselves to the particular 
kind of activity in which they are most interested, or 
for which they are best fitted. It is not desirable 
that the energies of a few zealous people should be spread 


206 The Parish Priest 


out thinly over many guilds and societies. Even under 
the most favorable conditions it is difficult to get any 
considerable number of people to work together in 
Church guilds and societies or to assemble for social in- 
tercourse on the basis of their common allegiance to the 
Church. They will offer all sorts of excuses for not 
working in guilds, but most of them are false excuses. 
They say they have too much to do at home or their 
business obligations prevent them from coming to the 
meetings, or their evenings are given up to classes or 
lectures of one kind or another. The root of the diffi- 
culty is that it is impossible to mix people who do not 
want to be mixed. That is the real reason why so many 
Church people neglect to bear their share of the burden 
of maintaining the guilds and organizations of the par- 
ish. If they could be assured that all the members in a 
certain guild would be of their own social set or 
class, it would not be so difficult to persuade them to 
join that guild. They feel uncomfortable when they 
expose themselves to the social peril of mixing with 
people who are not of their own kind. 

One way of solving the problem is to abolish all guilds 
and societies in the Church, and to persuade people to 
meet together simply for the worship of God and the 
reception of the sacraments, or for listening to sermons 
and instructions. Many plausible arguments might be 
advanced on behalf of this method of conducting a parish. 
It was convincingly set forth several years ago in a 
work of fiction called The Archbishop’s Test, which 
many of us enjoyed reading. 

It does not seem that the time has yet come when 
we should widely adopt such a method in the Church. 
Is it not better to acknowledge that to engage effectively 


The Parish Priest 207 


in any guild work requires abundant grace, and that 
only the genuinely converted members of a parish are 
equal to it? The guilds of a parish constitute an inner 
circle of consecrated disciples of our Lord, and people 
in general should be warned not to join guilds until they 
are ready to surrender their wills to God and give them- 
selves up unreservedly to an unselfish work in union 
with our Lord’s redemptive mission. It cannot be too 
strongly emphasized that people should not join guilds 
with a view of getting something for themselves, whether 
social or financial or gustatory. There might be an 
initiatory rite almost like a sacrament of the Church 
which people must perform before entering a guild. 
That would be a visible sign that they had once for all 
put aside selfish motives and devoted themselves heart 
and soul to a life of self-oblation to God, in union with 
the supreme Offering which our Saviour made once for 
all upon the Cross. 

It is a mistake to assume that everyone connected with 
a parish should be actively engaged in some parochial 
activity, or even enrolled as a communicant in good 
standing and a regular contributor to parish support. 
The slogan that was put out some time ago by one 
of the official bulletins of the Church, ‘‘Every member 
a worshipper, every worshipper a worker, every worker 
a giver, every giver a spiritual force,’’? is a bit too 
efficient for a parish of the Catholic Church. Some 
worshippers must be permitted to remain only wor- 
shippers for a time before being drawn into a system 
and enlisted as workers, or even definitely tagged and 
catalogued. Among the arts that we most need to culti- 
vate in our churches is the art of letting people alone. 
One can scarcely enter the average Episcopal church 


208 The Parish Priest 


without being pounced upon by one of the clergy or 
an usher or some kind of a worker. If one does manage 
to slink into a pew without being caught, some good 
woman insists on handing one a Prayer Book or a 
hymnal open at the proper place. We can quite under- 
stand how people of average timidity who have been 
so elaborately served, and perhaps in addition have been 
asked to fill out a questionnaire with name, age, names 
of parents, birthplace, previous religious affiliation, and 
so forth, might soberly resolve never to enter a church 
again. Things are not done so efficiently in the places 
which people frequent in large numbers; the movies, 
outdoor concerts, the parks, the ocean beaches, depart- 
ment stores or Roman Catholic churches. In all of these 
places a man can enter as he pleases, roam about at his 
own sweet will, and come away in peace without officious 
people intruding into his private affairs. It is a grave 
question whether it is best for the clergy to stand at 
the door of the church to shake hands with people as 
they come out. It is commonly praised as being cordial 
and hospitable. There are many people, however, who 
do not like it, particularly when the clergy jot down their 
names and addresses in a little book. Is it not enough 
for the clergy to stand near the door so as to be ap- 
proachable to anyone who wishes to meet them or to 
ask for spiritual ministrations? There is no reason why 
they should attempt to speak to everybody. Surely no 
sensible person goes to church simply to have the clergy 
shake him by the hand. The best managed department 
stores show their wisdom by allowing people to wander 
about looking at what they wish. If they desire to 
be waited on a clerk is always at their service. That 
should be the policy of the Church. People should be 


The Parish Priest 209 


permitted to come in and stand up if they want to, or 
kneel down to pray or sit in a pew to listen—either 
during public worship or at any other time. It is con- 
ducive to prayer outside the time of public worship to 
have the church only dimly lighted. People should be 
encouraged to bring their babies if they want to, in their 
arms or in baby carriages, even at eleven o’clock on 
Sunday mornings. If necessary they could be left in a 
nursery. 

Finally, we come to the relations that must exist 
between the parish on the one hand and the diocese 
and the general Church on the other. There are certain 
financial obligations that must be met. The diocesan as- 
sessment of course must be paid, or the parish cannot 
be represented in diocesan convention. The apportion- 
ment for diocesan missions and for general missions 
should be met as nearly as possible. I should say that 
our present method of establishing quotas could be im- 
proved upon if in the diocesan convention every year 
the rector of every parish and mission were required to 
state publicly how much he would suggest as the quota 
which his parish or mission ought to raise, both for 
the diocese and the general Church. There is no sense 
in levying a quota of six thousand dolars on a parish 
for the general work of the Church when it cannot pos- 
sibly give more than two thousand dollars. All these 
matters should be definitely considered and faced. Bither 
a thing has to be done, or it does not have to be done. 
We must not forget that we are members of the Body 
of Christ. We must never lose sight of our duties to 
the whole Church, to all our brethren in Christ, and 
to the unbelieving and unconverted everywhere. 


210 The Parish Priest 


There are two general policies, either one of which 
may conceivably be adopted by members of the American 
Episcopal Church, who rejoice in the fact that they are 
Catholics. 

One is to cut themselves off from their brethren who 
do not agree with them as to Catholic beliefs and 
practices; to take no part in the official efforts to fulfil 
the Church’s mission to the heathen at home and abroad; 
to refuse to codperate with the administrative system 
which functions through the President and National 
Council as constituted by General Convention. There is 
more to be said in defense of this policy than might 
appear at first sight. It is not simply taking refuge in 
a narrow parochialism. It is rather taking a heroic 
stand with the Catholic Church of the ages, refusing 
to compromise with anything that does not further the 
Catholic cause, knowing that persecution will inevitably 
follow. 

The other policy would demand that they throw them- 
selves heartily and enthusiastically into the authorized 
undertakings of that part of the Church in which God 
has placed them for better or for worse. They would 
thereby endeavor to leaven the lump of missionary enter- 
prise with Catholic teaching, sacraments, and worship; 
they would do all in their power to send the religious 
orders into the mission field; they would seek to control 
the writing and production of text books for religious 
education so that the Catholic religion and no other 
might be taught to our children and young people; they 
would contribute their point of view and offer their 
solutions of the problems before the Church in Church 
congresses, summer conferences and ecclesiastical gath- 
erings of every sort. They would not hide their light 


The Parish Priest 211 


under a bushel, but let it shine before men. They would 
encourage their young men to enter the priesthood and 
the religious life and their young women to enter con- 
vents or prepare for the mission field. In other words, as 
long as they remain members of the Episcopal Church, 
they would play the game! 

The second of these two policies would certainly be 
the more difficult to carry out, for it would require 
infinite patience, humility and charity. In the end it 
would unquestionably be the more telling in results. 
The first policy would tend to harden us into a bitter, 
bigoted and partisan group numerically insignificant in 
the midst of increasingly unsympathetic and hostile sur- 
roundings. The second policy, by the help of the grace 
of God, would ultimately make the whole Anglican com- 
munion Catholic, not only in its formularies, as it is 
now, but in the life of its members. 


CHAPTER XIX 
Tue DISCIPLINE OF THE Larry 


BrFoRE we can rightly understand this subject it is 
necessary to go back to first principles. Our Lord Jesus 
Christ, during His earthly ministry and throughout the 
succeeding centuries, has exercised a three-fold function 
of Prophet (or Teacher), Priest, and King. The Catholic 
Church, because it is the Body of Christ, has always 
been a prophetical, priestly, and kingly Body. In the 
words of St. Peter, the Church is a ‘‘chosen generation, 
a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people.’’ 
The Church, however, is not a human organization, 
but a divine organism created by God. The Church was 
fashioned by God in a particular way, just as the human 
body was formed with its distinctive organs and faculties. 
We cannot change the structure of the Church, any more 
than we can change the structure of the bodily organism. 
God created in His Church diversities of functions and 
operations. It is because of His creative act that the 
ministers of the Church are the special organs through 
which the Church exercises her prophetical, priestly 
and kingly functions; just as it is because of God’s crea- 
tive act that the body speaks through the mouth and 
hears through the ears. Thus our Lord conferred upon 
His Apostles and through them upon the ministry of 
apostolic succession to the end of the world, the prophetic 
power of preaching and teaching, the priestly power 
of blessing and consecrating, and the kingly power of 
binding and loosing. 

Under this third head is included the discipline of 
the laity. When our Risen Lord breathed upon His 
Apostles and said to them, ‘‘ Receive ye the Holy Ghost: 


The Parish Priest Dis 


whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; 
and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained,’’ He 
conferred upon the ministry the power of binding and 
loosing. To exercise this power it is necessary that the 
priest should hear the confession of the sinner; otherwise 
he cannot tell whether the sinner is truly penitent or not. 
It would be a gross injustice for the priest to retain 
the sins without hearing a full statement of the case. 
It would clearly be wrong for him to absolve the sinner 
unless he has ground for thinking that the sinner is 
truly penitent and contrite. Furthermore, in the exer- 
cise of discipline the priest is authorized by the Church 
to bar from the Holy Communion, in other words to 
excommunicate, those who are notorious evil livers or 
those who refuse to submit to the requirements of the 
Church. This power must be exercised subject to the 
approval of the bishop, who is the priest’s lawful 
superior. There is always a right of appeal to the bishop 
by the excommunicated person. 

The parish priest cannot exercise these powers of bind- 
ing and loosing in an arbitrary manner—that is, because 
of his own personal likes or dislikes or because of 
his. personal judgment as to what people ought 
to do. In the exercise of discipline he must act constitu- 
tionally in accordance with the Christian moral law as 
expressed in the commandments of God, the precepts of 
the Church, and the customary law of the Church. There 
is no space here to go into all these matters, as this 
is not a treatise on moral theology. Any standard work 
on moral theology (and unfortunately there are few 
good Anglican works on this subject) ought to be a 
sufficient guide to the priest in dealing with the cases 
of conscience that come before him. It is of the utmost 


214 The Parish Priest 


importance that a priest should become thoroughly 
familiar with a complete and authoritative book on 
morals. Otherwise he is only too likely to fall into 
absurd blunders in his attempts to exercise priestly 
discipline. 

The laity of the American Episcopal Church are not 
only under obligation to live up to the traditional moral 
standards of the Holy Catholic Church, but there is a 
particular obligation resting upon them to obey certain 
explicit regulations in the Book of Common Prayer 
and in the General Canons of the American Church. 
This will no doubt be a surprise not only to many of 
the laity but also to some of the clergy, for it is com- 
monly assumed that the Episcopal Church is a broad, 
comprehensive affair that imposes no legal restraints 
upon anybody. It takes but a cursory examination of 
the Prayer Book and the Canons to see that this is not 
true. What follows is the result of such an examination, 
with a view to discovering the regulations that apply 
to the laity. 


I. 
THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER 


The rubrics of the Prayer Book contain many laws 
binding upon the laity; they are not simply instructions 
for the clergy to follow. It is unfortunate that they 
are printed in such small type, as that gives the impres- 
sion that they are not of any importance. It might be 
well if all our Prayer Books could have them printed 
in red ink, as the word rubric implies. I have extracted 
those that refer especially to the laity, and have here 
grouped them under seven distinct headings. 


The Parish Priest 21D 


1. Lhe Three Notable Christian Duties. 

The three notable Christian duties are Fasting, Alms- 
giving, and Prayer. In the front of the Prayer Book 
there is a Table of Fasts—Ash Wednesday, Good Fri- 
day—and other days of fasting on which the Church 
requires ‘‘such a measure of abstinence as is more 
especially suited to extraordinary acts and exercises of 
devotion.’’ In its historical meaning abstinence implies 
going without flesh meat. The days which are to be 
observed as abstinence days are the forty days of Lent, 
the Ember Days at the four seasons, the three Rogation 
Days, and all the Fridays in the year except Christmas 
Day. 

The duty of almsgiving is laid upon the people by 
the rubric which requires that the deacons, church war- 
dens, or other fit persons appointed for that purpose 
shall receive the alms for the poor and other devotions 
of the people in a decent basin to be provided by the 
parish for that purpose and reverently bring it to the 
priest, who shall humbly present and place it upon the 
Holy Table. These alms are offered to God in the Prayer 
for the Church, ‘‘We beseech Thee most mercifully to 
accept our alms.’’ This implies that it is the duty of 
the laity to give alms to be offered to God with their 
prayers and the oblations of bread and wine. In the 
Office for the Visitation of the Sick it is said that the 
minister shall not omit earnestly to move such sick 
persons as are of ability to be liberal to the poor. 

The whole Book of Common Prayer is an injunction 
to pray. Especially there is provided in the Prayer Book 
a Table of Feasts to be observed in this Church through- 
out the year, which includes all Sundays in the year 
and the Holy Days for which special Collects, Epistles 


ZAG) The Parish Priest 


and Gospels have been appointed. This implies that it 
is the duty of the laity to be present at the offering 
of the Holy Sacrifice on each of those days. They are 
also required to perform extraordinary acts and exercises 
of devotion on the days of fasting and abstinence. It is 
not so clear that daily Morning and Evening Prayer 
are intended for the laity, when we recall the age-long 
tradition that it is especially the duty of the clergy 
to say the Divine Office. It has always been, however, 
the practice of the more devout laity to say some of 
the hours of the Breviary, and there ought to be a few 
devout people in every parish who would attend the 
daily offices in the church. The Prayer Book also con- 
tains forms of morning and evening prayer to be used in 
families, and it is directed that the master or mistress, 
having called together as many of the family as can 
conveniently be present, one of them or any other whom 
they shall think proper shall say the appointed prayers, 
all kneeling. 

2. Baptism. 

The people are to be admonished ‘‘that they defer not 
the baptism of their children longer than the first or 
second Sunday next after their birth or other Holy Day 
falling between unless upon a great and reasonable 
cause.’’ They are also warned that their children are 
not to be baptized at home in their houses without like 
great cause and necessity. There shall be for every 
male child to be baptized, when they can be had, two 
godfathers and one godmother, and for every female, one 
godfather and two godmothers, and parents shall be 
admitted as sponsors if it be desired. When an infant 
has been baptized at the home because of illness, if it 
afterward live, ‘‘it is expedient that it be brought into 


The Parish Priest 217 


the church’’ in order that ‘‘the congregation may be 
certified’’ that the true form of baptism was used in 
private. A form is also provided for the thanksgiving 
of women after childbirth, commonly called the Church- 
ing of Women. It is a distinct loss that this beautiful 
ceremony is so rarely used in the American Church. Its 
revival would do much toward exalting the dignity of 
motherhood. 

3. Confirmation. 

The Church requires that all fathers, mothers, masters 
and mistresses shall cause their children, servants and 
apprentices who have not learned their Catechism to 
come to the church at the time appointed and obediently 
hear and be ordered by the minister until such time as 
they have learned all that is here appointed for them 
to learn. It is also directed that as soon as children are 
come to a competent age, which is elsewhere described 
as years of discretion, and can say the Creed, the Lord’s 
Prayer and the Ten Commandments, and can answer 
to the other questions of the Short Catechism, they shall 
be brought to the bishop to be confirmed. They are not 
urged to come to the bishop of their own violition; 
they are to be brought. That implies confirmation at a 
tender age, which would be ten at the latest. 

4. Holy Communion. 

In the rubric at the end of the Confirmation Office 
the Church orders that none shall be admitted to the Holy 
Communion until such time as he be confirmed or be 
ready and desirous to be confirmed. The method of re- 
ceiving Holy Communion is prescribed in the rubric 
at the end of the Prayer of Consecration. The priest is 
to deliver the Holy Communion in both kinds, into the 
hands, first of the clergy (if any be present) and then 


218 The Parish Priest 


of the laity, all devoutly kneeling. This does not mean 
that they are to take the chalice away from the priest, 
but they should take hold of the base of the chalice and 
guide it to their lips. It may be desirable that this 
rubric should be changed to allow communion in one 
kind, or communion by intinction, or to allow the Sacred 
Host to be put in the mouth of the communicant; but as 
it stands, it does not sanction these practices. | 

It may be news to many that the Church urges a fre- 
quent receiving of the Holy Communion. This injunction 
is found in the rubric at the beginning of the Office for 
the Communion of the Sick, from which I quote: ‘‘For- 
asmuch as all mortal men are subject to many sudden 
perils, diseases, and sicknesses, and ever uncertain what 
time they shall depart out of this life; therefore, to 
the intent they may always be in readiness to die, when- 
soever it shall please Almighty God to call them, the 
Ministers shall diligently from time to time (but es- 
pecially in the time of pestilence, or other infectious 
sickness) exhort their parishioners to the often receiving 
of the Holy Communion of the Body and Blood of our 
Saviour Christ, when it shall be publicly administered 
in the Church; that so doing, they may, in case of 
sudden visitation, have the less cause to be disquieted 
for lack of the same.’’ Then follow provisions for the 
communion of the sick in their homes. 

The sick man is also given to understand that if for 
any reason he cannot receive the sacrament of Christ’s 
Body and Blood, that ‘‘if he do truly repent him of his 
sins, and steadfastly believe that Jesus Christ hath suf- 
fered death upon the cross for him, and shed His blood 
for his redemption, earnestly remembering the benefits 
he hath thereby, and giving Him hearty thanks therefor, 


The Parish Priest 219 


he doth eat the Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ 
profitably to his soul’s health, although he do not receive 
the sacrament with his mouth.’’? In other words, this 
teaches people how to make an act of spiritual com- 
munion. 

People are told in the Long Exhortation at the end 
of the Communion Office that they must come to the 
Holy Communion with a full trust in God’s mercy and 
with a quiet conscience, and that if they cannot quiet 
their conscience by the private confession of their sins to 
God they are to come to the priest or some other minis- 
ter of God’s word and open their grief—in other words 
make a sacramental confession, in order that they may 
receive such godly counsel and advice as may tend to 
the quieting of their conscience and the removing of all 
scruple and doubtfulness. 

The priest is under obligation to excommunicate those 
who persist in living in a state of notorious sin. This 
is provided for in the two rubrics at the beginning of the 
Communion Office, one of which deals with notorious 
evil livers, who are not to come to receive communion 
until they have openly declared themselves to have truly 
repented and amended their former evil life and to have 
recompensed the parties to whom they have done wrong. 
The other deals with those between whom malice and 
hatred reign. They are not to be partakers of the Holy 
Communion until they have been reconciled. If one of 
the parties has attempted reconciliation and the other 
refuses, the one who has made the attempt may be ad- 
mitted to communion. But anyone who has been ex- 
communicated must be reported to the bishop within 
two weeks. 


220 The Parish Priest 


d. Marriage. 

Those who are intending to be married ought to have 
the banns of their marriage published in the church. 
This would consist in the priest reading from the pulpit 
or the altar the following form: ‘‘I publish the Banns 
of Marriage between M of , and N of va By 
any of you know cause, or just impediment, why these 
two persons should not be joined together in holy 
Matrimony ye are to declare it. This is the first (second 
or third) time of asking.’’ In the Marriage Service it 
is said that if any persons are joined together otherwise 
than as God’s Word doth allow, their marriage is not 
lawful. The vows made by the man and woman to be 
faithful to each other so long as they both shall live, 
and the declaration by the officiating minister when he 
joins their right hands together and says, ‘‘ Those whom 
God hath joined together let no man put asunder’’ imply 
that Christian marriage is indissoluble except by death. 
At the present writing, the woman is made to promise 
that she will obey her husband. This means that the 
husband is the head of the family according to tradi- 
tional Catholic usage. In the revision of the Prayer 
Book the word obey may be omitted out of deference 
to the current American practice of letting the wife be 
the head of the family. 

6. Vusitation of the Sick. 

The parish priest should always be notified when any 
person is sick. That is stated in a rubric at the be- 
ginning of the Order for the Visitation of the Sick. 
When the priest visits the sick he is to examine them 
whether they repent them truly of their sins and are 
in charity with all the world. He is to exhort them to 
forgive from the bottom of their hearts all persons that 








The Parish Priest 221 


have offended them, and if they have offended others 
to ask forgiveness, and where they have done injury 
or wrong to any man they are to make amends to the 
utmost of their power. They are to be admonished to 
make a will, if they have not already disposed of their 
goods, and they are to declare their debts, what they 
owe and what is owing to them, for the better dis- 
charging of their conscience and the quietness of their 
executors. But the rubric adds, ‘‘Men should often be 
put in remembrance that they take order for the settling 
of their temporal estates while they are in health.’’ 

7. Burial of the Dead. 

It is apparently the intention of the Church as ex- 
pressed in the Office of the Burial of the Dead that 
honorable Christian burial should be given only to those 
who have died in a state of grace in the communion 
of the Catholic Church. It is expressly said in the 
rubric at the beginning of the office that this form of 
burial should not be used over any unbaptized adult, 
any who have died excommunicate, or those who have 
laid violent hands upon themselves—in other words, 
those who have committed suicide. It does certainly 
seem incongrous to read at the burial of a suicide such 
words as these: ‘‘The Lord gave and the Lord hath 
taken away; blessed be the Name of the Lord.’’ If any 
such persons are to be buried by the parish priest he 
should use a different form of burial than that provided 
for those who have fallen asleep in the Lord. 


1h 
THE CANONS OF THE CHURCH 


The Canons adopted in General Convention contain, 
in addition to special requirements for deaconesses and 


222 The Parish Priest 


lay readers, the following general laws relating to the 
laity: 

1. Marriage. 

No marriage shall be solemnized except in the pres- 
ence of two witnesses. The marriage of divorced persons 
is prohibited, except the innocent party in a divorce for 
adultery, provided that a year must have elapsed before 
the application for such a remarriage is made, and the 
court record must show that the divorce was granted 
for adultery. And provided further that any minister 
may decline to solemnize this or any marriage. When a 
person desires to be admitted to baptism, confirmation, 
or Holy Communion, and there is reasonable doubt as 
to whether his marriage has been otherwise than as 
the Word of God and the discipline of His Church al- 
low, the priest must refer the case to the bishop for 
his godly judgment thereupon, provided that no peni- 
tent person in imminent danger of death shall be refused 
any of these sacraments. 

2. Removal of Communicants. 

A communicant in good standing removing from one 
parish to another shall procure from the rector of the 
parish of his last residence a letter of transfer to the 
parish in which he is about to take up his residence. 
Upon presenting his letter of transfer he is to be enrolled 
as a communicant in the latter parish. 

3. Right of Appeal to the Bishon. 

When a person to whom the sacraments of the Church 
shall have been refused, or who has been repelled from 
the Holy Communion under the rubrics, shall lodge 
complaint with the bishop, it shall be the duty of the 
bishop to institute an inquiry. No minister of this 
Church shall be required to admit to the sacraments a 


The Parish Priest 2a0 


person so refused or repelled without the written direc- 
tion of the bishop. 

4. Sunday Worship. 

Canon XLVIII requires that all persons within this 
Church shall celebrate and keep the Lord’s Day, com- 
monly called Sunday, by regular participation in the 
public worship of the Church, hearing the Word of God 
read and taught, and by other acts of devotion and 
works of charity, using all godly and sober conversation. 


In exercising discipline over the laity the clergy must 
realize that the situation in the Church is quite different 
from that in any secular organization such as a school, 
a business house, a hospital or an army. In these secular 
organizations discipline may be enforced because people 
are either working on a salary or they are under the 
law of the state. They can therefore be dismissed or ex- 
pelled for any breaches of discipline. In the Church 
discipline can only be exercised by way of moral suasion. 
The requirements of the Prayer Book and the Canons 
represent ideals of conduct which ought to be observed 
by the laity. They can refuse to observe them if they 
like. Indeed, they can refuse to have anything more to 
do with the Church so long as they live. Consequently 
the clergy should avoid everything in the way of a dic- 
tatorial manner in their attitude toward their flock. 
They must always keep before them the ideal of the Good 
Shepherd. He goes before His sheep and calls them by 
name and leads them out one by one into the pasture 
or back into the fold. He is ready to lay down His 
life for their sake. The parish priest who always aims 
to live up to this ideal will experience little difficulty in 
the discipline of the laity. 


CHAPTER XxX 
ADVERTISING AND PROPAGANDA 


Ir is part of our missionary duty as zealous Christians 
to make the Church and its privileges known as widely 
as possible for the salvation of souls. It is not sufficient 
that we should seek to make the Church known; we must 
seek to make it known in such a way that people will be | 
led to do something about it. The science of advertising 
deals not only with the turning of the mind to certain 
things, but with the methods of inducing the will do act. 
According to experts in this field, advertising is the 
presentation of a proposition (usually in print) to the 
people in such a way that they may be induced to act 
upon it. It is all very well to say that if the people want 
the Church they can come to it, but in a world where 
their attention is constantly being drawn to all sorts of 
attractions and opportunities, it is necessary that the 
Church should enter seriously upon this whole task of 
advertising and propaganda. 

This work of advertising the Church can be done most 
effectively through living witnesses. The clergy of 
course first of all are engaged in the work of advertising, 
whether they like it or not. An enormous amount of 
attention is drawn to the Church through the mere 
fact that most of the clergy wear a distinctive ecclesias- 
tical garb as they walk along the streets. The casual 
sight of a clerical collar often starts a religious trend of 
thought in a person’s mind. That trend of thought may 
lead ultimately to some conclusion which will result 
in stirring the will to action. If the clergy were habited 
sartorially like the laity much less attention would be 
drawn to the Church in our modern life. There is no 


The Parish Priest 225 


way of estimating the vast amount of advertising that 
is effected by this very simple device, although probably 
advertising is the last thought that the priest has in mind 
as he puts on his clerical collar in the morning. 

Better however than advertising as it were through 
the cloth, is the advertising that radiates from a genuine 
priestly life. A priest who conducts himself always, 
whether on duty or off, in accordance with the highest 
ideals of his office, is exercising an immense influence, 
most of it unconscious, in augmenting the prestige of the 
clergy and the Church in the popular mind. It is not 
so much through his direct attempts to win people 
or his talks with them on religious subjects, as through 
the silent witness of his daily actions and conversation 
that people’s hearts are touched and their wills stimu- 
lated so that they will take a more practical interest in 
spiritual realities. We know from experience that it is 
the unconscious impressions that are lodged in people’s 
minds from day to day that have the most powerful effect 
in changing their lives. As we look back over our own 
development we can see how many of our most mo- 
mentous decisions were determined by an expression in 
someone’s countenance, the tone of someone’s voice, the 
glance of an eye, the clasp of a hand. These things 
impelled us to make a decision, whereas the long-winded 
arguments and the interminable discussions left us cold 
and weary. 

It is commonly assumed, and perhaps rightly, that the 
clergy exercise the most compelling influence in drawing 
people to the Church. Yet it is doubtful if any priest 
can have as wide and powerful an influence as a con- 
secrated layman. People discount what the clergy say 
because they think it is their profession that makes them 


226 The Parish Priest 


say it. When a layman comes out boldly for his re- 
ligious convictions and urges someone to come to church 
or to make his communion or to be confirmed, it is 
obvious that it is no professional obligation that ani- 
mates him, and that he is really speaking from the 
heart. If we had more laity of this kind the Church 
would be a more compelling force in American 
life than it is to-day. It is because the laity look 
upon their religion as merely a selfish concern, a sort of 
spiritual luxury for their own individual satisfaction, and 
think that if anybody is to be converted it must be 
done by the clergy, that the Church makes-so little 
impression upon modern social life. The Church can 
never adequately be advertised until every zealous lay 
person acknowledges that this is primarily his job. 

The Church also gains publicity through paid ad- 
vertising. Many parishes have found that a weekly leaf- 
let or a parish monthly magazine will abundantly repay 
the energy and money expended upon them. They keep 
the parishioners informed about the services on Sundays 
and week days, and the social activities of the parish; 
and they are of educational value to strangers who hap- 
pen to visit the parish church on the Lord’s Day or 
during the week. Some of our metropolitan parishes 
publish magazines on an ambitious scale, though few of 
them can compare in literary merit or spiritual stimulus 
with some of the English parish periodicals, such for 
example as the one issued by All Saints’, Margaret 
Street, in London. No priest should enter rashly upon 
such a venture. It takes much time and grinding hard 
work to produce a successful parish paper. In the ma- 
jority of our parishes it is far wiser to make personal 
appeals to the more intelligent of the laity to subscribe 


The Parish Priest One 


regularly to one or more of the weekly or monthly 
periodicals in the American Church. They need the 
utmost backing and encouragement that the clergy can 
give them; and they supply one of the best means at 
our disposal of advertising the Catholic religion. 

The newspapers are the most obvious media for Church 
advertising. It is now customary for most of our 
churches to insert notices in the Saturday papers, to 
let the public know the hours of services on Sunday. 
It is an open question whether it is best to advertise 
the subject of the sermon. If a bold, sensational subject 
is announced, it may tend to disgust some people and 
keep them away. If, on the other hand, a conventional 
subject dealing with a commonplace of religion is ad- 
vertised, such as The Way of Salvation or Baptismal 
Regeneration, it might strike some readers as so unin- 
teresting and unpromising that they would be driven 
to look elsewhere for spiritual entertainment. In some 
of the smaller town newspapers a friendly publisher 
will often donate a generous amount of space for de- 
scribing the social activities of a parish, or for 
announcing a special function of a festival character 
that is to take place on the following Sunday. It is 
one of the interesting signs of the times that the leading 
New York daily newspapers are giving more attention 
than ever to religious news. Even so conservative a 
newspaper as the New York Times now devotes a whole 
page on Monday to reports of sermons and other Church 
doings of the preceding Sunday. The Evening Sun also 
has a very successful religious page every Saturday 
evening. The New York Herald-Tribune engages com- 
petent reporters to cover all important Church activi- 
ties. In smaller cities the newspapers have often pub- 


228 The Parish Priest 


lished series of sermons which clergymen of ability have 
written particularly for the press. 

Perhaps in this connection something should be said 
about the ethics of advertising. It is a generally ac- 
cepted ethical principle that it is not fitting for profes- 
sional people such as doctors, lawyers and architects to 
advertise their qualifications. Why therefore should it 
not be equally unethical for the clergy to advertise 
themselves? One knows that physicians who advertise 
are ‘‘quacks,’’ and that lawyers who advertise are 
‘‘shyster’’? lawyers. What about the clergy who are 
sensationalists rather than men of God, and past masters 
in publicity? Are we not inclined to class them with 
the ‘‘quack’’ doctors? Perhaps a distinction should be 
made between the clergy who advertise themselves and 
those who advertise the Church. It certainly is wrong 
for the clergy to use the ordinary methods of publicity 
for getting their own names before the public eye. It is 
not wrong to let the people know of the work that the 
Church is doing and the hours and character of the serv- 
ices. The well known publicity expert, Mr. Ivy Lee, 
is of the opinion that the only proper test of the pro- 
priety of publicity is the sincerity and frankness with 
which it is conducted. 

We now come to the subject of propaganda, which is 
somewhat different from advertising, although its aim 
is advertising the Church and the Catholic religion. It 
is concerned not simply with turning people’s attention 
to religion, but with making it possible for them to 
inform themselves so that they may become intelligent 
Christians. This is done through tracts and books. A 
great many tracts can be sold by displaying them in a 
tract rack or on a table near the door of the church, with 


The Parish Priest 229 


the prices noted on each tract and a box in which pur- 
chasers may drop the money. It may seem amazing that 
anyone would think of trusting the general public to the 
extent of putting out tracts for them to take and as- 
suming that they would be honest enough to drop money 
into the box. It appears that those who have a tendency 
to kleptomania do not seem to be particularly interested 
in religious tracts. In any case, where it has been tried 
it has been found that a surprisingly large number of 
people who drop into the church during the week will 
buy these tracts. A booklet or tract that can be slipped 
into the pocket conveniently is one of the best ways of 
spreading the knowledge of religion, because in this 
newspaper and magazine reading age people will read 
tracts who would never think of reading a book. They 
can read them while they are riding in the subway or 
in the street cars or waiting for an appointment in a 
doctor’s office or elsewhere. The buying and selling of 
tracts will also be found an excellent means of interest- 
ing the men of the parish and giving them congenial 
work to do. This work appeals to their imagination and 
interest as being along the lines of their knowledge and 
daily experience, and will often prove an opening by 
which they may be led to do some reading for them- 
selves. ; 

Many parishes have discovered that it is well to have 
a book shelf near the door of the church with someone 
at hand on Sunday after the services to answer inquiries 
and negotiate sales. Another excellent method of induc- 
ing people to read is to have a parish lending library 
of religious books. This will prove more effective if the 
rector, or someone designated by him, will take upon 
himself the task of becoming acquainted in a general 


230 The Parish Priest 


way with the contents of the library in order that he 
may be competent to call people’s attention to it and 
advise them in their choice of books. 

Jn these days of publicity experts it is not unheard 
of for the Church to employ such experts. Who has not 
heard of bishops and distinguished presbyters who em- 
ploy such specialists to keep their names constantly 
before the public eye? I am not qualified to write about 
this phase of advertising. The day may come when 
there will be nothing in the newspapers that is not paid 
for. When that day comes I shall cease to be a reader 
of the newspapers. | 

There is another modern method of publicity which 
is as yet only in its infancy, namely the radio. 
There is a difference of opinion among the clergy as to 
the advisability of using the radio for broadcasting 
Church services and especially sermons. Some of the 
prominent Protestant preachers are strongly in favor of 
the radio as an agency supplementary to the Church. 
The Paulist Fathers in New York have recently had an 
elaborate radio broadcasting station attached to their 
church. It seems to be the opinion, however, among 
Protestant preachers that it is better not to offer a 
new excuse to people who are willing to seize upon any 
pretext for staying away from church. Therefore their 
sermons are often broadcasted at another hour than that 
of the regular church service. 

There are many, nevertheless, who believe that the 
radio is having a disintegrating effect upon organized re- 
hgion. Undoubtedly there are thousands of Americans 
who feel that it is not necessary to go to church as long as 
they can stay at home and hear a sermon on the radio. 
This new development would seem to be more detrimental 


The Parish Priest 251 


to the Protestant Churches than to the Catholic Churches, 
for Catholics are still under obligation to attend Mass on 
Sunday. They cannot fufil this obligation by listening to 
the Mass over the radio. While we may not say that the 
stars in their courses are fighting for the Catholic re- 
ligion, it does seem as though the waves of the ether are 
making it more difficult than ever for the Protestant 
Churches, which have always stressed preaching as the 
chief reason for the assembling of their people, to at- 
tract congregations on the Lord’s Day. 


CHAPTER XXI 
Tue BuLessep SACRAMENT 


Tse Holy Eucharist should be the central dynamo in 
every parish: the source of power and holiness and 
inspiration for the clergy and workers; the chief act 
of worship for all who are in earnest about their re- 
ligion; the bond of fellowship, unity and peace for all 
sorts and classes of people, and the divinely established 
means of feeding them daily with spiritual and heavenly 
food. If it is not thus made central, but pushed off un- 
ceremoniously into an obscure corner of parochial acti- 
vities, we may reasonably conclude that the parish is 
suffering from a malignant disease which, if it is not 
speedily cured, will ultimately prove fatal. No parish 
can long remain a Christian parish, much less a Catholic 
parish, which does not accord to our Divine Saviour the 
first place in its affections, devotions and activities. 
Ever since our Lord’s ascenion into heaven the Blessed 
Sacrament of the altar is the Body through which His 
divine Spirit as well as His human heart and mind and 
will now function among His faithful disciples. For us 
who are still making our pilgrimage on earth this Sacra- 
ment is for all practical purposes the only Christ we 
know. This is now the sacred Body through which 
He dwells in our midst and ministers to our needs. 
Even though we had once known Christ in the flesh we 
know Him so no more, for now we know Him almost 
exclusively in His sacramental manifestation. Therefore 
under the dispensation of the Spirit in which we now 
live, if we are to put our Lord first in our interests, 
whether as parishes or as individuals, we must put the 
Blessed Sacrament first. 


The Parish Priest 233 


The Mass should be the chief act of worship on every 
Lord’s Day, as well as on the principal Holy Days of 
obligation. It is desirable whenever possible that there 
should be a High Mass. If a deacon and subdeacon 
cannot be secured to assist the celebrant, then at least 
there may be a sung Mass or Missa Cantata, with in- 
cense, processional lights, sanctus bell and eucharistic 
vestments—of a color proper to the season—worn by the 
officiating priest. If such a rendering of the Mass is not 
possible, it should be the ideal toward which the priest 
is trying to lead his people. It is desirable that the 
people should not communicate at this later Mass and for 
several reasons. First, they should have received fast- 
ing at an early hour. This is practically the only way 
of training our people in the ancient practice of fasting 
communion. Secondly, it makes the Mass too long if 
there are many communions. Thirdly, the sacrificial 
aspect of the Kucharist is more convincingly brought 
out if only the celebrant communicates. Fourthly, there 
are always sightseers present at a late Mass, many of 
whom are not even baptized. It is hardly to be sup- 
posed that all those present would be in a spiritual 
condition to receive the Body and Blood of Christ. Yet, 
if they see numbers of the congregation going forward 
to receive many of them will follow their example and 
make their communions. In the early Church all un- 
baptized persons, those living in mortal sin, and those 
undergoing penitential discipline were dismissed at a 
point in the Mass corresponding to the beginning of our 
Prayer for the Church. Only the faithful were permitted 
to remain for the Canon of the Mass. To a superficial 
observer it would seem that some of our fashionable par- 
ishes still conform to this rule on the first Sunday 
in the month. 


234. The Parish Priest 


In every healthy parish there ought to be a large num- 
. ber of communions made at the early Masses. In large 
cities some parishes are so situated that many of the 
regular parishioners find it more convenient to receive 
Holy Communion at churches nearer their homes. There 
is no objection to this practice. Many urban parishes 
meet this difficulty by serving breakfast at a small cost 
in the parish house to all who come to the early Mass. 
from a distance. Is it too much to hope that some day 
our city parishes may have the facilities to provide 
breakfast and luncheon for those who come from far, and 
perhaps also a library and smoking room so that those 
who have made the long journey from a suburb or the 
country may spend the day at the church either as a day 
of retreat or in pleasant converse between services with 
fellow members of the Body of Christ? Whenever pos- 
sible it is desirable that there should be a Sunday 
Children’s Mass at nine or thereabouts. The music 
should be simple so that the children may sing their 
part of the Mass, together with a few familiar hymns 
printed on a card. There ought to be a ten minute 
instruction or sermon to children, and if the music is 
not too elaborate the whole service should be over in 
three quarters of an hour. A light breakfast could be 
served to the children who make their communions, 
and then from ten to ten thirty there could be classes" 
of instruction for the children of the Church School, 
and a Bible class for adults. This would seem a better 
arrangement than to attempt to bring the children out 
again for the Sunday School in the afternoon. 

Tf there are several priests in a parish there ought 
to be two or three daily Masses, one of them at an hour 
early enough to provide for workers in shops and offices, 
school teachers and pupils and early risers generally, 


The Parish Priest 235 


and another at a later hour such as nine or nine thirty 
for women who do their own housework or people of 
leisure. If the church is in a district where there are 
many night workers it might be found possible to have 
a daily Mass for them at midnight or at two or three 
in the morning. This is done in several Roman Catholic 
parishes in New York City and meets with splendid 
response from many classes of night workers such as 
those in the offices of the great daily papers. Perhaps 
a midnight Mass every Saturday night might supply 
the needs of those who like to sleep all day Sunday. 
This, however, is only a tentative suggestion, and is 
not to be taken too seriously. 

As it is the pastoral duty of every parish priest to 
feed all his people frequently with the Bread of Life, 
if they are rightly disposed, he must not lose sight of 
the sick and shut in members of his flock. The countless 
demands upon the time of a busy priest will make it 
impossible for him to celebrate the Holy Communion 
privately for every such parishioner. Therefore it is 
well nigh essential that at all times the Blessed Sacra- 
ment should be reserved in the tabernacle of one of 
the altars so that the priest may take It without delay 
to the sick or the dying. This is not a question of 
rubrics; it is a duty implicit in his pastoral office. No 
priest would hesitate to carry the Blessed Sacrament 
down into the body of the church to communicate an 
aged person or a cripple who could not approach the 
communion rail. The rubrics, however, make no provi- 
sion for any such procession. It is justified by the rubric 
of common sense. The reservation of the Blessed Sacra- 
ment for the sick is also justified by the rubric of 
common sense—in addition to the fact that it has been 


236 The Parish Priest 


sanctioned by the immemorial usage of the Catholic 
Church in the Hast and in the West. 

If the Sacrament is reserved this should not be done 
in some hole in the basement, but in a place of honor 
and beauty on an altar openly in the church. There is 
also something to be said for reserving the Blessed 
Sacrament in a hanging pyx before the altar. The re- 
served Sacrament is not something to be ashamed of, 
unless we are ashamed of our Blessed Lord! He is to 
be blessed, praised and adored wherever He is, whether 
on His throne of glory in heaven or in the most holy 
Sacrament of the altar. We are warned by some timid 
souls within the Church that it is dangerous to allow 
such devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. Dangerous for 
whom? It is quite possible that it may be dangerous 
for Satan and for all enemies of our Lord, whether 
inside or outside of the Church. It is inconceivable that 
it could be dangerous for faithful and loving disciples 
to spend a few moments whenever possible praying to 
their Lord there in the tabernacle in the dimly lighted 
church, with the flickering sanctuary lamp reminding 
them of the throbbing love of His Sacred Heart. 

A form of eucharistic devotion which has proved ex- 
tremely helpful to many souls is Exposition of the 
Blessed Sacrament. A large Host is placed in a mon- 
strance before or above the tabernacle, the altar is 
brilliantly lighted with candles, and if possible made 
beautiful with flowers. The exposition may continue for 
a half hour or an hour. People will come and go and 
some of them will remain throughout. There is no bet- 
ter way of practicing the fellowship of silence of which 
we have heard so much from certain modern mystical 
writers. It is a splendid opportunity for affective prayer 


The Parish Priest 237 


and the prayer of contemplation. The attention of silent 
worshippers thus intensely concentrated on the focal 
point of the divine Presence often produces marvelous 
effects in the depths of the unconscious self. Those of 
us who have tried such prayer will testify that it is 
difficult work, but it is the kind of work that abundantly 
rewards our efforts. Perhaps at no other times do we 
enjoy such intimate and conscious communion with our 
divine Lord, when He speaks so convincingly to our 
souls. Nevertheless, Exposition is not for everybody; it 
is too exacting a form of devotion for those who have not 
had considerable spiritual experience. 

A more popular form of eucharistic devotion is Bene- 
diction of the Blessed Sacrament. <A large Host is 
exposed on the high altar in a monstrance and hymns 
are sung to our Lord in His sacramental Presence, includ- 
ing the O Salutaris and the Tantum Ergo. Thereupon the 
priest, with a humeral veil over his shoulders, takes hold 
of the monstrance and with it makes the sign of the 
cross, thus enabling our Lord to give benediction to the 
assembled faithful. Then the monstrance is replaced on 
the altar, the Divine Praises are said by the priest and 
repeated by the people. The Psalm Benedicite is sung 
and the devotion is brought to an end. The whole service 
does not last longer than a quarter of an hour. It may 
be preceded by a Litany of the Saints or a Litany of the 
Blessed Sacrament, or it may immediately follow Ves- 
pers or the sermon after Vespers. It forms an admirable 
climax to Vespers on Sunday and adds the sort of de- 
votional element that Vespers needs to give it a popular 
appeal. Preceded by a Litany and an address, Benedic- 
tion makes an excellent form of popular devotion for 
a week day evening service. 


238 The Parish Priest 


The service of Benediction is frankly borrowed from 
the Roman Catholic Church. That is no argu- 
ment against it. The same thing is true of the Three 
Hour Service which is now almost universally in use 
among Anglicans on Good Friday. The justification for 
borrowing such devotions that are not in our Prayer 
Book is simply that they promise to be spiritually help- 
ful to our people. If in the event they do not prove to 
be helpful there is nothing to prevent their being dis- 
continued. It is not like borrowing something that we 
wear out by using and then feel ashamed to return. If, 
on the other hand, Benediction should prove to be suit- 
able and should meet a long felt need in many of our 
parishes it could ultimately be sanctioned by General 
Convention and officially included in the Prayer Book. 

Sometimes a priest is asked how many communicants 
he has listed in his parish. That is a very embarrassing 
question. In a large parish it is impossible to give an 
accurate answer. Perhaps one hundred or five hundred 
or one thousand are reported in the annual statistics. 
That is what the parish register shows. The parish 
register however contains the names of those who have 
lapsed or who have moved away and never been trans- 
ferred to another parish. Perhaps some of them have 
died since moving away and their names have not been 
erased from the list. The Canons of the Church 
require that we report all those as communicants 
who have been listed the year before unless we know 
that they have died or have been formally transferred 
to other parishes. Obviously this is a very imperfect 
method of counting communicants. Something ought to 
be done to correct it. That however is the business of 
General Convention or the diocesan conventions. For 


The Parish Priest 239 


practical pastoral purposes the clergy must rely on a 
carefully kept card catalogue of actual communicants. 
They are the spiritual backbone of the parish. A zealous 
priest will endeavor to keep in close personal touch with 
them and will often mention them by name in his daily 
intercessions. It would of course be impossible in an 
extensive parish to pray daily by name for all his com- 
municants, but they might be grouped for each 
day in the week. This a a great deal to ask a busy 
priest to do, but if he prays for them by name it will 
help him to preserve the right relationship to his people. 


CHAPTER XXII 
Exxtra-LiruraicaL DEvoTIONsS 


Awny parish priest of parochial experience has speedily 
found that the authorized services of the Book of Com- 
mon Prayer are not adequate to the needs of parish 
work. Just as the rubrics of the Prayer Book afford a 
minimum of direction and remind one of the fragments of 
wreckage which have chanced to survive some great 
catastrophe, but are quite insufficient for the per- 
formance of any work, so the services of the Book 
of Common Prayer are a survival of the liturgical treas- 
ures of the pre-Reformation Church. No doubt the parts 
which have survived have been selected for survival 
and may be said to be a survival of the fittest; yet it 
is true that the discarding of all services but such as 
seemed to the reformers of the Sixteenth Century ab- 
solutely necessary has thrown succeeding generations 
which find them inadequate on their own resources. 
It has imposed upon them the necessity of in some way 
making good the deficiency which they so acutely feel. 

Every parish priest, according to what he feels to be 
the need of his work, sets himself to supplement the 
Book of Common Prayer. This may be in a very simple 
way, by Sunday School and guild services, services of 
admission to the various societies he organizes, and the 
like; it may be in the way of extra services, popular 
vespers, services of song and so on; or he may institute 
days of intercession and other purely devotional serv- 
ices. Something the active priest will do, and in so 
doing he is very likely to arouse criticism of his action. 
Owing to the conservatism of human nature, the new 
is commonly opposed; but after it ceases to be new, it is 


The Parish Priest 241 


treated as though it were by law established. We are 
so used to special services for Sunday School and for 
guilds and so on that we should be surprised if any 
one were to criticise them as unauthorized or requiring 
episcopal sanction. The unusual services, on the other 
hand, are at once subject to criticism by those who do 
not like them, as a thing unlawful. 

Inasmuch as extra-liturgical services have long existed 
and will no doubt continue to exist (as in fact the very 
life of a parish demands that they shall exist), it is de- 
sirable that we should, if possible, reach some general 
principle which shall govern the introduction and use 
of them. As things are at present, any one seems to 
think himself at liberty to write to the papers denouncing 
a parish priest for introducing into his parish some 
service or form of devotion which is distasteful to the 
complainant. He usually denounces the service as un- 
lawful, though he neglects to quote any law that it 
violates. If the service is of a certain type, it is de- 
nounced as Romish. There are still, it would appear, 
a considerable number of persons to whom that adjective 
is the equivalent of an argument. 

Can we reach any consistent principle of action in 
this matter? Certainly not, if we are to be governed 
by the prejudices of ecclesiastical politics. If my neigh- 
bor is to denounce Benediction as Romish and I am 
to denounce Prayer Meetings as Protestant, we shall 
create unnecessary antagonism, but shall not arrive at 
any principle of action. There is, however, a principle 
which seems to me to be adequate to determine conduct 
in this matter. I would state the position as follows: 
The parish priest, when by due ecclesiastical authority 
cure of souls is committed to him, receives of necessity, 


242 The Parish Priest 


as an inherent element in that charge, the authority and 
obligation to provide for the spiritual needs of the 
people who are committed to him. He supplies those 
needs in measure by the proper use of the authorized 
services of the Church, as set forth in her formularies; 
but, if and when he finds need to provide further, it 
must be held that the authority committed to him at his 
institution authorizes him to use his own judgment in the 
selection of the services and devotions which will be of 
benefit to his people. If this freedom be denied him, he 
is helpless as the administrator of the parish. He is, of 
course, limited in his action by the Catholic Faith, which 
he has promised to believe and to teach, but he is not 
limited by the tastes and preferences of his neighbors. 
He is commissioned to deal with a certain group of souls 
and the commission given him, after trial and examina- 
tion, implies that the Church trust him to deal with the 
situation in which it places him. It implies too that 
the power so to deal is committed. His only limita- 
tion is that he shall act within the limits of the Catholic 
religion. 

This seems to be stated, or clearly implied, in the 
Office of Institution of Ministers into Parishes or 
Churches. ‘‘We do by these Presents give and grant 
unto you, in whose Learning, Diligence, sound Doctrine, 
and Prudence, we do fully confide, our License and Au- 
thority to perform the Office of a Priest, in the Parish 
of H. And also hereby do institute you into said Parish, 
possessed of full power to perform every Act of sacer- 
dotal Function among the People of the same: you con- 
tinuing in communion with us, and complying with the 
rubrics and canons of the Church, and with such lawful 
directions as you shall at any time receive from us.”’ 


The Parish Priest 243 


The question will of course be raised, ‘‘ How can these 
powers of the parish priest be reconciled with the author- 
ity of the bishop? Does not the power and right to set 
forth special services reside in him, and ought not an 
extra-liturgical service to be submitted to him for au- 
thorization before it can be used?”’ 

To answer the last question first, I do not believe 
that it is necessary or desirable to submit such services. 
The rector to whom the bishop has given ‘‘License and 
Authority to perform the Office of a Priest,’’ and who 
has been put in possession of ‘‘full power to perform 
every Act of sacerdotal Function among the People’’ 
confided to him, may certainly assume that it is within 
his power to institute special services which do not 
displace or interfere with the services set forth by au- 
thority. The limitation imposed upon his action is that 
he shall comply ‘‘with the rubrics and canons of the 
Church, and with such lawful directions as you shall at 
any time receive from us.”’ 

The question undoubtedly narrows down to this—that 
the necessity and right of initiation rests with the parish 
priest, as the judge of the spiritual need of his cure. 
His action, however, is subject to review by the bishop. 
If, in the judgment of the bishop, he has exceeded the 
limitations of his power, the bishop may intervene and 
review his action. That seems to be the meaning of the 
Institution Office and is also the meaning of all perti- 
nent legislation. Provision that the bishop may authorize 
special services cannot be construed to mean that the 
parish priest cannot institute such without reference to 
the bishop. The important question is how far and 
under what conditions the bishop has power to interfere 
with the acts of the parish priest. 


244. The Parish Priest 


There seems to be an impression in many minds that 
the power of the bishop is an arbitrary and irresponsible 
power. This, we infer, is a theory held by certain mem- 
bers of the Episcopal Order. There are bishops who 
presume to forbid this or that act or service, purely on 
the ground that they don’t like it. These acts are almost 
exclusively, if not quite, directed toward Catholic prac- 
tices, as they are called. One bishop forbids the use 
of servers, another forbids eucharistic devotions, a third 
objects to vestments, and so on and so on. Is there any 
theory of the power of the episcopate that makes such 
actions legitimate? 

Whatever may be the powers originally inherent in 
the episcopate, the office as it at present exists and is 
exercised is a conditioned office. It is limited in all sorts 
of directions by the creeds, the constitutions and the 
eanons of the Catholic Church and of the particular 
Church which has confided to the bishop a special juris- 
diction. His power is a strictly constitutional power, 
limited as is the power of the parish priest. To keep to 
the point, when the bishop institutes the parish priest, 
he tells him that he is bound to comply ‘‘with the 
rubrics and canons of the Church, and with such lawful 
directions as you shall at any time receive from us.’’ 
The only question, therefore, that can arise between the 
rector and the bishop is whether a service instituted by 
the rector violates any positive law of the Church. The 
bishop, as against the rector, has no arbitrary power 
and no legislative power. He has only the power to 
administer the legislation of the Church. In case of 
difference of opinion between bishop and rector as to 
what this power is in a given case, the recourse is to 
the ecclesiastical courts. Any rector instituting services 


The Parish Priest 245 


which are not approved by his bishop should be willing 
to withdraw the services at the bishop’s request or to 
submit to trial. He should be utterly submissive to the 
lawful authority of his bishop. He is under no obligation 
to submit himself to the personal taste of his bishop. 

It is complained that the present state of things in 
the matter of the introduction of special services is 
a state of anarchy; that, if there be no power in the 
episcopate to govern in the premises, there should be 
legislation enacted to cover the case. Such complaints 
are gravely exaggerated and are instigated by dislike 
of certain services of devotion which have been intro- 
duced. At present at least, it seems to me that any 
legislation is undesirable. The difficulties which now 
exist are probably much less than the difficulties that 
would be raised by legislation. The situation, no doubt, 
is not ideal. It is amusing and perplexing to hear those 
who denounce attempts to enforce the meaning of the 
creeds, and demand freedom for those who deny the 
Virgin Birth and the Resurrection, denounce the 
‘illegality’? of Benediction and the Rosary and demand 
that they be suppressed. Let us have the liberty that 
the Church allows. So far from diversity in parochial 
uses, within legal limitations, being objectionable, it is 
to be desired and is in any case inevitable, as clergy and 
their concepton of the needs of their parishes will always 
differ. Absolutely uniformity, so far from being desir- 
able, is a disease of the Latin mind. 

At present the episcopate seems inclined to stand 
aside and avoid trouble, and wisely. We can only de- 
sire episcopal guidance when we have an episcopate in 
whose wisdom as guides we can have confidence. At 
present the American episcopate is predominantly com- 


246 The Parish Priest 


posed of men who have made commendable records as 
parochial administrators, who have avoided strife by 
avoiding any definite ecclesiastical position, but who, as 
a body, are innocent of any knowledge of theology in 
any of its branches. Their ambition is to carry on the 
diocesan work with a minimum of friction and to raise 
money to keep the machinery going. They cannot af- 
ford to stir up controversies, and the last thing they 
want is an ecclesiastical trial. We cannot expect from 
them unbiased decisions based on Catholic doctrine and 
tradition, but only decisions based on public policy. This 
compels in the parish priest an even larger measure of 
self-determination than he commonly desires; but he must 
make the best of the situation and, in the development 
of his parish work, be content to be guided by the wis- 
dom and experience of the past, while not neglecting 
anything that promises to be helpful in his work, either 
because of its modernity or of its provenance. 

We who are Catholics are reproached from both the 
Roman and the Protestant side with being mere imita- 
tors of Rome. I suppose we shall have to submit to the 
reproach in a certain degree. The Anglican Church dur- 
ing the mediaeval period of its life shared with the rest 
of the Catholic Church in the possession of a rich devo- 
tional literature and practice. The most of this treasure 
was abandoned at the Reformation, for reasons that we 
need not here discuss. We, who claim the inheritance of 
the whole past of the Church and especially of the Church 
of England, while recognizing the inevitability of the 
abandonment, do not recognize the finality of the Refor- 
mation action. What was for the time dropped may 
be resumed, when the conditions which led to the 
Reformation action have passed away. These conditions 


The Parish Priest 247 


have now passed and we are asserting our right to our 
inheritance. We repudiate the position that all the 
riches of the mediaeval Church, all the manifold devo- 
tions which its experience created—because the Six- 
teenth Century reformers dropped them and because 
succeeding Anglican generations acquiesced in this 
action—are therefore to be classed as anti-Anglican and 
Roman. We insist that the Church to-day is essentially 
identical with that of the past and that the heritage 
of the past belongs to us. We repudiate the assertion 
that, as descendants of the Reformation, all the rich past 
is alien from us. We resent the Roman claim to the 
exclusive ownership of the mediaeval treasures. 

And therefore we do not seek the revival of mediaeval 
devotions, eucharistic devotion, the Rosary, devotions to 
our Lady and so on, as imitators of Rome; we are merely 
recalling to use what our Reformation fathers abandoned 
and our immediate predecessors had forgotten. If our 
claim to historic continuity is good, these devotions are 
ours. If they are not ours to revive and use, it is a 
very severe criticism of our theory of continuity. I am 
not asserting that the Middle Ages were always right in 
whatever they did and therefore to be imitiated; I am 
simply claiming, as an Anglican, the right to use all 
of the mediaeval developments which have been ap- 
proved by the great body of Catholic teaching and ex- 
perience since they came into existence. 

There is very little in the way of extra-liturgical devo- 
tions which Catholics are to-day putting into use that 
is without justification in the mediaeval past and which, 
therefore, can be charged with being borrowed from 
Rome. It remains true that devotional developments 
which stopped in England at the Reformation went on 


248 The Parish Priest 


unchecked in the Latin Church. It seems to me the part 
of wisdom to study the results of these post-Reforma- 
tion centuries of experience in the Roman Communion 
and to learn what we can from them. It seems to me 
at once ungenerous and uncharitable to criticize us for 
so doing; and, from the side of any criticism of ‘‘Ro- 
manizing tendencies,’’ it is a noteworthy fact that it is 
precisely those later Roman developments which are 
post-Reformation and modern which have been widely ac- 
cepted by our very Anglican critics. Those who criticize 
us for the use of eucharistic devotions and the Rosary, 
which are mediaeval and English, are themselves using 
missions, retreats, the Three Hours‘ Service, and so on, 
which are Romish and modern. I think, therefore, we 
may go on as we have begun and use all that we can 
find useful. 

The Prayer Book provision of stated services fails to 
provide for the cultivation of the devotional life of the 
people. We limit this statement, of course, by the recog- 
nition of the central nature of the Mass in the growth of 
the spiritual life, but experience shows that that is not 
all that is needed. I am more and more convinced that 
one of the causes, perhaps the chief cause, of our failure 
to develop souls more eager for spiritual growth, who 
grasp the notion of holiness and are ready to pursue it, 
who are utterly unsatisfied by a religion of ‘‘morality 
touched by emotion,’’ is due to the abstract nature of 
our teaching. The average person needs constant aid 
and stimulus in the pursuit of spiritual ideals. There is 
constant need to bring theory to practice, to translate 
the abstract into the concrete. Nothing does this as well 
as devotions of one kind or another, and the practical 
wisdom of the Church has been evidenced by the favor 
it has shown to the development of such. 


The Parish Priest 249 


I know of no reason why we should hesitate to avail 
ourselves of the wisdom and experience of the past in 
such matters. Those who have so availed themselves 
will be ready to give evidence to the benefit that has 
been derived by the use of devotions. There are, to be 
sure, many within the Church whose rejection of Catholic 
theology carries with it of necessity a rejection of Catho- 
lic practice; but these, if they will experiment in their 
own direction and give the Church devotional practices 
which will aid souls to grow in grace, will perhaps 
confer a great benefit upon us. We who believe the whole 
Catholic teaching of the Church must go our own way 
in the application of that. It is unimportant to us that 
a devotion is not primitive. Our conception of the 
Church is that of a living organism, the mystical Body 
of Christ. It has the same authority to-day that it has 
always had, it brings out of the treasures of its inex- 
haustible life things new as well as old. Its life con- 
stantly expresses itself in the creation of the new, as 
well as in the preservation of the old. The date, there- 
fore, of a devotion is of no importance. What is of im- 
portance is that it be a practical application of the In- 
carnate Life to the needs of God’s children. 

I think it will be agreed by those who have experience 
in this matter that the most useful class of devotions 
are those which grow out of the eucharistic Presence, 
such as Exposition and Benediction of the Blessed Sacra- 
ment. I have never understood what is meant by saying 
that Benediction is illegal in the Anglican Communion. 
I can understand that it is unauthorized in many Angli- 
can dioceses (that is, that it has not received episcopal 
saction), but that is quite a different thing. In many 
dioceses in this country it has received implicit sanc- 
tion—it has been instituted by parish priests in the 


250 The Parish Priest 


carrying on of their work for the edification of their 
people and has called out no episcopal protest. This is 
all that is needed, the implicit recognition of the right 
of the priest to provide for the needs of his people. 

It is unfortunate that those who have no experience 
of the value of eucharistic devotions in the development 
of the spiritual life of a parish should constitute them- 
selves critics of such devotions on purely theoretical 
grounds. That they do not themselves believe in the 
Real Presence or do not believe that the Sacrament 
should be used for anything other than the purposes 
of its institution may very well govern their own action; 
but it is quite useless for them to attempt to impose 
what, from a Catholic point of view, is at once a defec- 
tive theory of the Eucharist and a defective theory of 
the Church upon those who accept in its fulness Catholic 
theology and tradition. These will insist upon carrying 
into effect their beliefs, whatever may be the conse- 
quences, and it is inconceivable that a Catholic Com- 
munion should ever commit itself to any legislation 
which will exclude them from its fold. 

It would seem that any one who feels that the great 
need of the time is increase in personal piety and re- 
ligious experience would have only to go into a church 
where the Blessed Sacrament is exposed and watch the 
many who come and remain through the time of Ex- 
position, who kneel in adoration, who pass their time in 
intercession and then go quietly back to their business, 
in order to realize, whatever be his theology, that here 
at any rate is an operation, a means, which these many 
find helpful in their lives. The critic may think them 
mistaken in their theology; he cannot think that their 
action leads to other than the best results. 


The Parish Priest PAs BY 


To the Catholic there is no greater blessing or privi- 
lege conceivable than this of constant access to the 
Divine Presence, mediated by the sacramental species. 
To him it is joy unspeakable and full of glory to be 
able to come whenever he has leisure time and kneel 
before his Lord, enshrined in the Tabernacle. The priest 
finds that his people come gladly to Exposition and 
Benediction, come with a real devotion to our Lord, and 
oo away gladdened and comforted. He finds that such 
services as the Procession of the Blessed Sacrament at- 
tract devout crowds, whose faith is made definite and 
strengthened by their participation in such rites. Once 
the obscuring veil of prejudice is torn away, people find 
their joy in expressing their love and devotion before the 
Presence. The way has now been well prepared by 
pioneers and it is much to be hoped that the next few 
years will see a vast increase in the use of eucharistic 
devotions. 

Beside those forms of devotion which center about 
the Tabernacle, there are many others which are help- 
ful. The devotion which to-day has perhaps most preju- 
dice to overcome is the Rosary. There seems to be a 
very real hatred of any devotion which includes our 
Lady. ‘This is of course intelligible, in view of the 
polemical literature of the past and of the very real 
ignorance of the place that Catholic theology assigns 
to the Blessed Virgin. That only the more makes it 
our duty to labor unceasingly to vindicate our Lady’s 
place in the devotional life of the Church. We Anglicans 
have the right to claim the use of the Rosary as a 
part of our ancestral inheritance, unless we are to assume 
that the Reformation cut us off permanently from all that 
it did not preserve—a theory which would ultimately 


De, The Parish Priest 


land us in the baldest kind of Protestantism. Devotion 
to our Lady and the use of the Rosary were deeply 
characteristic of English mediaeval life. 

And the Rosary has much to be said for it as a flexible 
mode of devotion. It adapts itself to the simplicity of 
the child, it is able to express the spiritual experience 
of the saint. When people speak scornfully of it as 
childish and trivial and fit only for the ignorant, they 
would do well to recall the fact that for centuries the 
greatest saints of the Catholic Church have found it a 
practical and useful form of devotional experience. It is 
of great educational value. The Fifteen Mysteries 
which are the basis of it keep before the mind the es- 
sential facts of the Christian religion. No one who says 
the Rosary constantly can be ignorant of these. The 
child learns these in an unforgettable way. The adult 
who constantly meditates upon them is assimilating the 
essense of the Gospel story. The Rosary can be said 
simply and quickly, with special intention; it can be 
meditated slowly and devoutly, that the Mysteries of the 
Gospel may saturate the soul. Its elements, the Creed, 
the Lord’s Prayer, the Gloria Patri, and the Hail Mary, 
bring before one the primary elements of Christian belief 
and practice. Are those who object to its use, as a 
matter of fact, teaching any form of devotion which 
can compare with it in educational value? 


CHAPTER XXIII 
WorsHIP AND CEREMONIAL 


Tue two chief means for the presentation of the Catho- 
he religion are instruction and worship. As to the latter 
I think we may frankly say that the traditional 
method in use in the Protestant Episcopal Church is not 
a success. I say the traditional method because I do not 
believe that it is the method necessarily imposed by the 
Book of Common Prayer. There is nothing in the Prayer 
Book which demands or suggests the exaltation of Morn- 
ing Prayer into the place of the chief act of worship of 
the week. It is our misfortune that formularies and 
offices which are perfectly Catholic in their form and 
meaning were soon deflected from their intention by the 
wave of Protestantism which swept over the Church 
soon after they were published. The consequence was 
that a Protestant interpretation soon became imposed 
upon the language of the formularies and that this in- 
terpretation has been largely taken for granted as their 
necessary meaning. This interpretation is very difficult 
of reconciliation with the language of the formularies 


_ themselves; yet, even after a century of struggle to vin- 


dicate the Catholicity of the Anglican Communion, a 
majority of the membership of the Church clings ob- 
stinately to the Protestant tradition, as against the true 
meaning of the formularies. 

One result of this has been the unnatural exaltation 
of Morning Prayer to the place of the chief act of 
Sunday worship. Whether from a practical or from a 
theological point of view, there is nothing to be said 
for this emphasis upon Matins. All that can be said 
for it is that people obstinately cling to it, not because 


254 The Parish Priest 


of its proved excellence, but because they are used to 
it; and to replace it the parish priest has to battle with 
the intrenched prejudices of generations, prejudices 
which are strengthened by fear and dislike of anything 
Catholic. If, however, the advance of the Church in 
the direction of intelligent Catholicity is to continue, 
the sine qua non is the displacement of Matins by Mass. 

The Book of Common Prayer provides, putting it in 
the lowest terms, for a daily Mass, and requires a weekly 
Mass at lowest. The whole theory and history of Catho- 
lic worship requires the Sunday Mass as the chief act 
of worship of the congregation. This theoretical and 
traditional requirement is not met by the Sunday low 
Mass. That Mass is provided, not to meet the obligation 
of the worshipping congregation, but to afford opportun- 
ity for communion, such as the circumstances of modern 
life require. It cannot be claimed that parochial re- 
quirements of worship are met by the low Mass. We 
have to face the facts, and the facts are that the con- 
eregation of Christ’s Church in this place is not and 
will not be at the early Mass; and that they are not ex- 
pected to be there is shown by the provision of a later 
service where they are expected to be. This later service 
is the principal service of the day, the corporate act of 
worship of the congregation; but by all Catholic tradi- 
tion this corporate act of worship ought to be the Mass, 
and in the meaning of the Anglican formularies the 
Mass it should be. 

No doubt the authors of the Anglican formularies 
intended that Mass should be preceded by Matins and 
Litany, but experience soon showed that this was an 
unworkable ideal. The Protestant party complained that 
the service so ordered was ‘‘longsome,’’ and the result 


The Parish Priest 255 


was that the Mass was in time practically discarded, until 
it became a rare event in parochial life and Matins and 
Litany took its place. This, of course, could not have 
happened unless people had ceased to believe in the 
Mass as the chief act of worship and come to regard it 
as a means of occasional approach to God. In conse- 
quence, with the spread of Protestant influences, there 
was a loss of belief in the Real Presence and a conse- 
quent loss of the sense of the value of communion; and 
the end was the eighteenth century laxity, and celebra- 
tions of the Holy Communion in most places not oftener 
than three times a year. 

It was from this degradation of the notion of worship 
and this abandonment of the Catholic ideal that the 
Oxford Movement started to rescue us. It based itself 
upon a belief in the continuity of the Anglican Church, 
as reformed, with the Church of the past—on the es- 
sential identity of its teaching with the teaching of the 
Church in all ages, and on the essentially Catholic char- 
acter of the Anglican formularies. It held that the laxity 
in belief and practice which it found dominant in the 
Anglican Communion was due, not to loyalty to the 
Anglican Reformation, but to a misunderstanding of 
the formularies and a failure to carry their meaning 
into practice. In the matter of worship, it could not be 
that a Church which provided for a daily Mass was 
other than grievously misrepresented by a communion 
three times a year. 

The first step of the Oxford Movement in this matter 
was the attempt to restore frequency of communion; it 
being felt, and rightly felt, that what was urgently 
needed was a stimulus to the spiritual life. It was soon 
seen that this was only a step forward, that the needs 


256 The Parish Priest 


of the Church demanded the full restoration of Catholic 
worship; that the one service which our Lord had com- 
manded could not rightly be displaced by a merely 
human service, but must be made the chief service of the 
Lord’s Day. This remains the Catholic ideal, though 
imperfectly asserted by many Catholic priests for reasons 
which we have not to discuss in this place. 

What to me at present seems to need emphasizing 
is the obligation of congregational worship, the fact 
that the members of a given parish constitute a unit 
in the Body of Christ and are a worshipping whole, that 
from them as a body is due a united act of worship. 
Naturally, this is not recognized by Protestants; un- 
naturally, it is not recognized by many Catholics. On 
analysis it turns out that Catholics seem as little to 
recognize parochial obligation in this matter as Prot- 
estants. They content themselves with a parochial 
routine that gives opportunity for communion but leaves 
the chief act of worship Matins. Such a parochial system 
one must consider far from ideal. It may, no doubt, be 
said that under modern conditions we cannot have the 
ideal—that a parochial High Mass with a communicating 
congregation is impossible, unless the obligations of 
proper preparation are sacrificed. That is no doubt true, 
but we can approximate the ideal, we can have the 
Solemn Mass as an act of parochial worship, while 
communions are made at early Masses. We can insist 
upon a parochial obligation, as something over and above 
the obligation of the private Christian, and that this 
obligation involves the obligation of corporate worship. 
One cannot look with favor upon the growing tendency 
to find one’s whole Sunday obligation fulfilled in twenty 
minutes at a Low Mass, and often not even communi- _ 


The Parish Priest 257 


cating. I know it will be insisted that attendance at 
Mass does fulfil one’s obligation. One’s obligation as 
a private Christian, possibly; but one’s obligation as a 
member of a parish? And is it really the teaching of 
the Catholic Church? Is the twenty minutes at Mass on 
Sunday morning all the meaning that Sunday has for a 
Christian? 

No doubt the more Masses there are in a parish, the 
better. It is desirable to give every one in the parish 
an opportunity to communicate as often as he wants to. 
This need is at the back of the Prayer Book provision 
for a daily Mass. There is also the need, a need that 
I think is growingly felt among us, for votive Masses of 
one sort and another. The increasing desire for Re- 
quiem Masses is one of the most promising signs of our 
Church life, and the desire to offer the Holy Sacrifice 
with special intention indicates an increasing understand- 
ing of the meaning of the Sacrifice among our people. 
This increasing appreciation of the Mass is undoubtedly 
making it easier everywhere to introduce the late Mass; 
but ought we to wait until it is easier? There are many 
things in parochial administration which are matters of 
expediency, but our Lord’s command, as understood by 
all Catholic Christendom, can hardly be considered such. 
A priest entering upon the work of a new parish may 
not be bound to introduce the late Mass on the first 
Sunday of his rectorship, but is he not bound to make it 
clear that he is going to introduce it? Certainly he may 
not go on year after year, ostensibly preparing for 
something that never takes places. One knows of par- 
ishes which have been prepared for the late Mass for a 
great many years, without any realization of their ideal. 

As an act of parochial worship and as the principal 


258 The Parish Priest 


spiritual event of the day, the late Mass is properly 
presented with an elaboration that is not desirable at the 
early -Mass. In the one case, simplicity and brevity 
are desirable; in the other, we may assume ampler time 
and the desirability of the use of the full traditional 
ceremonial of the Mass. We are conceding altogether 
too much to modern spiritual sloth in assuming that we 
must limit the morning worship of Sunday to an hour or 
an hour and a quarter. What we should aim at is, not 
to make the service as short as possible, but as interest- 
ing as possible. People are not restless at the theater 
or opera, though the entertainment last for three hours. 
They will remain through the presentation of a play or a 
picture because they are interested. If a sermon is 
dull and a service utterly unattractive, less than an hour 
will wear out the patience of the congregation; but with 
an interesting sermon and a properly presented Mass the 
congregation will stay any reasonable length of time 
quite gladly. There is no reason why people should be 
bored in church. If they are bored, there is something 
the matter either with their religion or with what goes on 
in the presentation of it. 

It would be amusing, if it were not tragic, the enor- 
mous stress that, during the last century, has been laid 
upon ceremonial in the Anglican Communion—a stress 
out of all proportion to the importance of the subject. 
Ceremonial is good manners in worship and ought to be 
taken for granted, as good manners are in other depart- 
ments of life. In social intercourse it is never a ques- 
tion of good manners or no manners, but of good man- 
ners or bad. So in the conduct of public worship it is 
not a question of ceremonial or no ceremonial. Ceremonial 
of some sort there must be—the only question is what 


The Parish Priest 259 


sort; and the most ardent anti-ceremonialist has fixed 
habits in the conduct of services, usually the habits of 
the Church circle in which he grew up. He is as much 
a ritualist as his advanced brother. The true question 
about ceremonial is, ‘‘How much, and what sort?’’ 

It is not as though we had some degree and sort pre- 
scribed. The formularies of worship of the American 
Church obviously proceed upon the assumption that the 
clergy know how to conduct public worship, unless we are 
to assume that the framers of our services thought it of 
no importance how they were conducted. The minimum 
of liturgical direction contained in these formularies is 
insufficient to guide one through any service set forth. 
If the service is to be performed, certain things must 
be done, certain garments must be worn, certain positions 
must be taken; but what these shall be cannot be fully 
known from the rubrical directions. Yet priest and 
people must in some way determine what they are to do. 
The direction in the English book pointing back to what 
was done at the beginning of the reign of Edward VI is 
valuable to this extent, that it assumes the existence of 
a traditional ceremonial which was to go on and to be 
applied to the new Prayer Book offices, as far as it 
could. Under Protestant influence, ancient ceremonial 
(like many other things ancient in the Church) went by 
the board and was more and more forgotten, until you 
arrived at the slovenliness of the eighteenth century. 
No directions were given at any time as to ceremonies. 
For nearly four centuries now the Churches of the Angli- 
can Communion have made no attempt to order services. 
The clergy have been left to their own devices, with 
the naturally-to-be-expected anarchical results. Author- 
ity has occasionally intervened, not intelligently to order 


260 The Parish Priest 


services, but to complain of this or that thing done by 
individual priests, as ‘‘disloyal’’? or ‘‘Romanizing.”’ 
Possibly, under the circumstances, this is not altogether 
to be regretted. One is afraid that a Congregation of 
Rites set up at any time in the last century might have 
led to results in the way of ceremonial that are awful 
to contemplate. 

What, then, is the much perplexed priest to do? It 
has been held that, assuming the Ecclesia Anglicana to 
be a self-sufficient part of the Church Catholic and tak- 
ing seriously its claim to continuity with the pre-Re- 
formation Church, we should go back and try to es- 
tablish what was the ceremonial in England at the time 
of the Reformation, and that we should strive to revive 
this as the distinct Anglican use. Laudable attempts 
have been made to discover what was the ‘‘Sarum Use’’ 
and to apply this to our present needs. 

I think we must confess that the attempt has some- 
thing to say for itself in theory, but is a failure in 
practice. The logic of events has made it impossible. 
If the ceremonial revival which marked the second stage 
of the Oxford Movement had consciously and intelli- 
gently based itself on the revival of ancient English 
ceremonial, it might have succeeded in such revival; 
but it did not. For one thing, there was no adequate 
knowledge of ancient English ceremonial available, 
and the earlier ceremonial adventures of the Oxford 
leaders show a strange and indeed pathetic ignorance 
of ceremonial detail—a fact that could be illustrated 
by the Anglican adventures with the stole. In conse- 
quence, we have had what we might expect, strange 
ceremonial activities which principally evidence zeal 
without knowledge. We have had what is worse, 


The Parish Priest 261 


Churchmanship tested by ceremonial. A priest who said 
to a friend of mine, ‘‘I am High Church, I wear a 
colored stole,’? was perhaps an extreme case, but in 
principle frequent enough. So we have had demonstra- 
tions of Churchmanship running the whole gamut from 
colored book-marks up to fiddle-back chasubles. 
Without rubrical directions which make it possible to 
carry on the stated services, without a traditional cere- 
monial as guide, without the aid of any sort of author- 
ity directing, what is the parish priest to do? Hven 
the most convinced anti-ceremonialist is to-day a good 
way off from the practice of his Early-Victorian ances- 
tors of a century ago. I think without exaggeration we 
can say that he has accepted Catholic ceremonial in the 
degree in which he is convinced that it is not ‘‘Catholic.”’ 
My own feeling is that, whatever may be said theoreti- 
cally for a special Anglican use (and it can be said that 
such a use would probably arouse less antagonism than 
what is understood to be Roman), it is wholly impractic- 
able. The fact is that the early Oxford men who began 
the ceremonial revival made individualistic selection 
from the contemporary Roman use, with the result that 
such ceremonial as prevails at present is Roman or, to 
use a perhaps less irritating word, Western. Their 
action was individualistic and, under the circumstances, 
could hardly be other. The result is that hardly do 
any two parishes agree in ceremonial detail. There is 
nothing very serious about this, though it irritates those 
who are endowed with the Latin temperament, which 
places uniformity and order before all else. The most 
serious effect of this diversity of use is the consequent 
perplexity of the laity, who are wont to assume that 
there must be some ceremonial which is right and other 


262 The Parish Priest 


that is wrong, not understanding that in these matters 
there are no absolute values. 

The chief objection, to my mind, against any at- 
tempt to go back to a traditional English use, apart from 
the difficulty of finding such use, is the fact that cere- 
monial (like other worth-while things) is living. Study 
and experience lead to constant changes. Ceremonial 
develops because it is a reflection of a devotional experi- 
ence. The drama of the Mass remains essentially un- 
changed from century to century; its great moments are 
fixed. This is true of any use, ancient or modern; but 
in detail changes are from time to time made which are 
intended to emphasize expression or to facilitate effective 
rendering. This change of detail is the mark of a living 
ceremonial, the reflection of a conscious experience. It 
is such variations in rendering, such improvements, if 
you will, of ceremonial that a Congregation of Rites 
concerns itself with. With us, each priest is his own 
Congregation of Rites. The results are not all that can 
be desired. Is it not, therefore, the part of common 
sense to make use of the living experience of the Western 
Church, to adopt and adapt to our present conditions 
what it has found useful and desirable? This, no doubt, 
exposes us to criticism from all sides, but there are 
worse things than that to support. We would recom- 
mend, therefore, the study of Western use and its frank 
adoption as far as the circumstances admit. This gives 
us a definite rule, and has the advantage of following the 
simplest rite. It would be helpful if a congregation of 
priests could be formed to agree upon a uniform use, so 
that, whatever amount of ceremonial was used, it augttte 
—as far as it went—be of a certain type. 


The Parish Priest 263 


Here we meet the practical difficulty of our peculiar 
circumstances. How much ought one to press cere- 
monial and how much ought one to introduce? There 
is, of course, a certain minimum of ceremonial that any 
Catholic priest will insist upon: such matters as vest- 
ments, mixed chalice, ablution, ete. belong to the decent 
and orderly rendering of the Mass and will be introduced 
in any case. How far beyond necessary things the 
priest shall go will depend upon local circumstances. 
My own feeling and experience is that most of the 
ceremonial of the Mass can be introduced without much 
difficulty and without arousing opposition of a serious 
nature. I am not concerned so much with the amount 
as with the sort of ceremonial introduced. That is where 
we need the standard, that we shall all travel the same 
road in ceremonial development. To try to get rid of 
individualism and to conform to some type is the ground 
for the adoption of Western ceremonial. . 

The attempt at uniformity as far as we go need not 
carry us to any extremes. It is not necessary to worry as 
to whether a chasuble is of a particular shade of red 
or purple. There are no ‘‘ecclesiastical colors,’’ in this 
sense. The number of lights is not fixed. Things 
of that sort remain open. Color and light are the im- 
portant things. It is to be desired, however, that posi- 
tions should be uniform, as they impress the congrega- 
tion, and variations in these matters are perplexing. 

A different parochial question, which can only be 
decided by local conditions in the individual case, is 
the amount of tolerance we are to show toward ignorance 
and prejudice. How far are we bound by the law of 
charity? Certainly not so far as to give up a service our 
Lord commanded, because certain ignorant members of a 


264. The Parish Priest 


congregation object to the late Mass. A period of in- 
struction, no doubt, preparatory to the action, but no 
more than that. In unessential things one may go a 
little farther, always guarding lest one be governed by 
timidity and sloth in one’s conduct, rather than by 
charity. I do not think that in most cases there is 
very much difficulty in introducing into a parish all 
that is essential in Catholic teaching and practice. I 
myself have never known a case in which a priest who 
gained by his personal qualities the confidence and es- 
teem of his people was unable to carry them with him 
in the ceremonial presentment of the services. It takes 
a little time to win confidence in one’s leadership, but 
that gained one can go on. 

As little should be made of ceremonial as possible. 
It should not be constantly put forward and empha- 
sized and talked about. Its devotional value should be 
stressed. If the emphasis all through one’s conduct 
of parish life is placed where it belongs, on devotional 
and spiritual values, if it is evident that these are what 
is sought in all the priest does, he may count on the 
loyalty and support of his congregation as a whole; and 
when the parish as a whole is loyal it will be difficult 
for one or two persons to make trouble. The ‘‘Parish 
Pope,’’ I faney, is a rare character. I have often read 
of him, but I never have in experience encountered him. 
If he really exist, it ought not to be very difficult to 
eliminate him. 


CHAPTER XXIV 
Tue SaAcRAMENT OF MARRIAGE | 


As we look out upon the present plight of marriage 
and family life in the modern world, we are inclined 
to ask ourselves the question, Why should the Church 
have anything to do with marriage? Apparently 
hundreds of marriages have not the remotest connection 
with the Christian religion or with any religion. Why 
should they be solemnized in a church by a priest, rather 
than in a municipal building by a justice of the peace? 
It is not immediately obvious why the Church should 
eoneern herself with marriages any more than with busi- 
ness partnerships, clubs, lodges, railroad trains, or 
transatlantic liners. The reason becomes evident how- 
ever as soon as we ask a further question, Why should 
the Church take any interest in human beings? 

The answer to this question is simple enough. The 
Church is not some sort of an ossified organism which 
is being preserved in a vacuum. The Church is indeed 
a divine organism, the mystical Body of Christ, but it 
is an organism which is alive. It functions in the midst 
of the world of men and women primarily for their 
sake. The Church endeavors to bring all human beings 
within her sacred inclosures as early in their lives as 
possible, for the purpose of regenerating them in the 
waters of baptism, strengthening them with spiritual 
gifts, nourishing them with spiritual food, protecting 
them from error, filling their minds with truth, and 
euiding their feet into the way of peace. The Church 
seeks to sanctify and save all who come within the 
sphere of her influence. She claims them for God, along 
with their possessions, interests and ambitions. The 


266 The Parish Priest 


Church knows by divine instinct that human life without 
God is empty, feeble and futile. 

For the same reason the Church is ever ready and 
eager to bless and sanctify all human relationships and 
activities. Like the ancient Roman writer, she can say 
humam nihil ame alienum puto. Some of the trans- 
atlantic liners have been christened and blessed by the 
Church, and employ regular chaplains who say Mass on 
board every day. On most British ships the Church of 
England Office of Matins is rendered by officers and 
crew on every Lord’s Day. Would that they had a 
chaplain to say Mass! It would not be wholly unsuitable 
for a business corporation, if composed of real Chris- 
tians, to open its business every morning with prayer. 
Its official staff might attend Mass in a body once a 
month to ask for God’s guidance and blessing on all their 
undertakings. In the Middle Ages the guilds of the 
various crafts and the merchant guilds were largely 
religious organizations. Their members often attended 
a Mass which was offered for the guild, and each guild 
had a chaplain. | 

On the same principle, the Church is abundantly justi- 
fied in bringing the institution of marriage and the 
whole marriage relationship within the range of her 
jurisdiction. Under the Czarist régime in Russia, a 
Russian bishop who objected to a royal marriage on the 
eround that it was contrary to God’s law, was told to 
mind his own business. He replied that that was what 
he was doing. Marriage is a relationship sanctioned 


a and commended by Christ. Indeed, He appeared to de- 


‘part from His usual practice by laying down definite 
requirements and restrictions to be observed by His 
followers in the matter of marriage. It was to be indis- 


The Parish Priest 267 


soluble except by death. No true follower of Christ was 
to marry one who had been divorced. Those whom God 
had joined together no man was to put asunder. From 
the beginning the Church taught that Christian marriage 
was a sacrament. This meant that when a baptized man 
took a baptized woman to be his wife, an indissoluble 
spiritual bond was created by God and this new spiritual 
relationship was to be a means of grace for both husband 
and wife. In this case the man and the woman were the 
ministers of the sacrament. The priest who officiated did 
not perform the sacrament; he simply gave the blessing 
of the Church upon their union. The Church does not 
bless all marriages—those between unbelievers, for in- 
stance, or those between divorced people—but only 
those of baptized people which are contracted as God’s 
Word doth allow. 

Another reason why the Church concerns herself with 
marriage is that she is supremely interested in the 
creation of a Christian home, because that is the best 
milieu ever devised for the birth of children and their 
proper training and development into future citizens of 
the Kingdom of God. The Christian family supplies 
the most promising material for the increase and build- 
ing up of the Body of Christ. The Church regenerates all 
infants brought to her to be christened, and makes them 
thereby partakers of the divine nature. But this new 
life is likely to come to nothing unless children are 
nurtured in a Christian home and grow up under the 
influence of Christian teaching and example from both 
father and mother. The ideal Christian home is a far 
more useful adjunct to the Church than even a perfect 
Christian school, for the first six years in the life of a 
child will largely determine his whole future character 
and destiny. 


268 The Parish Priest 


It is not only because marriage is a sacrament that 
the Church is able to reach out and bless the marriage 
relationship, but also because as a result of the In- 
carnation, conjugal love has become a new thing. A new 
principle of life entered into the world when Jesus 
Christ was born of Mary. As a consequence of this 
principle of life permeating human nature, love could no 
longer remain mere physical passion nor sentimental 
fancy. Wherever the Spirit of Christ rules, love is a 
sacred and mysterious relationship between two spiritual 
beings which enables them not merely to live together, 
but to form a new social unit of an otherworldly char- 
acter, and to be God’s instruments for bringing new 
lives into the world and fitting them for eternity. The 
dominant principle of this new union is self-sacrifice, 
for it can be a success only in so far as the husband 
and the wife can by the grace of God learn to decen- 
tralize themselves. We must not make the mistake of 
supposing that marriage was originated by the Christian 
Church. As an institution it is as old as the human 
race, but it was taken over by the Church and im- 
measurably spiritualized and exalted. 

One of the most valuable contributions that Christian- — 
ity has made to the life of the race is this spiritualizing 
of human love. It is a process that has been continued 
through the centuries since Christianity became a force 
in the world after the conversion of Constantine. Aside 
from the gift of grace in the sacrament of marriage 
and the broad influence of the teachings of Christ upon 
the relations of men and women, we may attribute 
this spiritualizing of human love to three main causes. 

First came the exaltation of virginity and motherhood 
which followed everywhere from the widespread venera- 


The Parish Priest 269 


tion of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The reverence paid 
to her as the Mother of God by the converted citizens of 
the Roman Empire and also by the newly converted 
barbarian races did unquestionably bring about a higher 
estimation of women in European civilization. Some- 
one has said that if the worship and veneration of the 
young nations of Europe, instead of being directed to 
Christ and His Blessed Mother, had been given to Bac- 
chus and Venus, the future history of Europe would have 
been quite other than it was. 

The second cause is the rise of chivalry during the 
ages of faith. Under the influence of chivalry the love 
of ladies became magnified almost into a religion. Al- 
though it was accompanied by much irregularity and 
license, yet in the main it led to the refinement of sexual 
passion and lifted it to a higher plane than the physical. 
Many a chivalrous knight of the Middle Ages learned 
by experience that the true joy of love consisted not in 
physical gratification, but in the loyalties and idealisms 
which were generated in his soul by devotion to his lady. 

The third cause is Christian asceticism. The fact that 
all through the centuries there have been multitudes of 
men and women who have thoroughly controlled their 
bodies by means of ascetic discipline and have conse- 
crated themselves to spiritual interests, has had an in- 
calculable effect in spiritualizing the relations of men 
and women in the married state. The vowed celibate 
was a living witness to his brethren in the world that it 
was possible to keep the desires and instincts of the body 
in complete subordination to the higher purposes of life. 

Tf the Catholic Church has been right all through the 
ages in treating marriage as a means of conveying grace, 
then marriage should be prepared for by faith and re- 


270 The Parish Priest 


pentance on the part of the recipients of this sacra- 
mental grace. They should not be encouraged to enter 
into it lightly, but ‘‘reverently, discreetly, advisedly, 
soberly, and in the fear of God.’’ They should receive 
instruction from their priest as to the meaning of the 
gift of grace which is about to be bestowed upon them. 
They should cleanse their souls by receiving the sacra- 
ment of penance. They should make their communions 
together, if not at a nuptial Mass, at least at a Mass on 
the morning of the day on which their marriage takes 
place. 

When we compare with this minimum of reasonable 
requirements the actual state of mind and soul in which 
many men and women approach Holy Matrimony, we 
are compelled to admit that our actual practice falls 
far short of the Christian ideal. Many so-called society 
marriages; which take place in fashionable churches, are 
little more than acts of sacrilege. They profane not 
only the church in which they take place and the altar 
before which they are solemnized, but they are also an 
insult to the Holy Spirit who conveys the grace of the 
sacrament. 

The clergy have much to repent of in this matter. 
What should we say of a priest who would admit people 
to Holy Communion regardless of their spiritual and 
moral attitude? They might be unbelievers or living in 
habitual sin. Would he invite them with a laugh and a 
joke on his lips to approach the altar and receive the 
Bread of Life? Obviously this would bea sacrilege. Yet 
if marriage is a sacrament the clergy are often guilty 
of profanation and irreverence of almost as serious a 
character. What shall we say of those who maintain on 


The Parish Priest Pi fal 


a large scale a center for dispensing the grace of matri- 
mony and reap an immense annual revenue from their 
sacrilegious acts? 

Perhaps the fact that so many marriages are sacrileg- 
ious and an offense against the Holy Spirit, supplies 
the explanation of the falling away from religion that 
is so often noticeable in newly married couples. Those 
who make unworthy communions, not discerning the 
'Lord’s Body, will, according to St. Paul, suffer spiritual 
harm and ultimate loss of faith (or perhaps physical 
death) unless they repent. Surely the same dangers are 
in store for those who receive the sacramental grace 
of marriage without a proper moral and spiritual dis- 
position. What wonder that they rarely appear in 
church and that they give little heed to any of the 
obligations of religion until later in life when children 
come, or when serious trouble descends upon their homes. 

If we are to continue to treat marriage as if it were 
a civil ceremony, would it not be better to give up having 
marriages in our churches and advocate state marriages? 
It is really a function that properly belongs to the state. 
The Church should have nothing to do with uniting 
people promiscuously in marriage bonds which they have 
no intention of observing. That is a prostitution of the 
Church’s powers. It would be far better to have the 
state perform all marriages and then permit those who 
are Christians to come to the Church for an ecclesiastical 
marriage in order that they may make their vows before 
the altar, and that their union may receive the blessing of 
God. 


The Works of Rev. J. G. H. Barry, D.D., Litt.D. 


Rector of Church of St. Mary the Virgin, New York 


MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


A Devotional Study with Liturgical Notes 
(Two Vols. 12mo., cloth. 608 pages.) $5.00 


“One of the best modern books of meditation we have met. 


Full of 


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Times, Nov. 28, 1924. 


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